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The 32-year-old World Champion has proved to be a trailblazer for the game in his home country scaling unprecedented feats one after the other on his journey to the top.
Ding Liren. (X)
Defending World Chess Champion Ding Liren’s rise to the top seems to have a recurring motif with the Chinese Grandmaster fighting against all odds and coming up trumps time and again.
The Wenzou-born genius was introduced to the 64-square mat at the tender age of four years of age and has been mastering the principles of the centuries-old game over the past three decades.
The 32-year-old World Champion has proved to be a trailblazer for the game in his home country scaling unprecedented feats one after the other on his journey to the top.
Liren popped up on the radar with his triumph at the U-10 and U-12 categories of the World Youth Championships in the years 2003 and 2004, respectively. He earned the title of Grandmaster in the year 2009 by clinching the heavily-contested Chinese Chess Championships crown, before clinching the national championship titles in 2011 and 2012, which thrust him into mainstream stardom in the sport.
Liren was a key part of the Chinese side that claimed the FIDE Chess Olympiad title in 2014, before replicating the feat in the year 2018. The prodigy clinched the individual bronze himself during the first triumph, before bettering it with a gold-medal win in the latter victory.
The Chinese prodigy broke into the top ten of the World Rankings in the year 2015 and breached the ELO rating 2800 mark the next year. He also went a hundred classic chess games undefeated between 2017 and 2018 as he went from strength to strength all the while flying the Chinese flag in good stead.
Liren finished the Candidates event in 2022 second but was given the opportunity to play for the title following Magnus Carlsen’s decision to abdicate the world title.
The Chinese genius made the most of the opportunity as he got the better of Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the 2023 World Championship final in a gritty display that demonstrated his resilience and ability to come-from-behind.
The 14-match-series summit clash ended in a draw after the classic games finished with nothing between the players, before Liren edged out his opponent in the rapid format which served as a tie-breaker. With the win, Liren became the first Chinese player to claim the coveted title and only the 17th player throughout the history of the sport to be termed World Champion.
The win, however, took a toll on the Chinese whizz, who opted to sit out multiple tournaments following his championship victory in April 2023 citing his mental well-being. His return to the circuit was rather rough as he had to contend with multiple setbacks and defeats, while his rankings dwindled.
Liren dropped from world number 2 to 23 amid his rocky stint, and the odds were stacked against him ahead of the World Championships 2024 final in Singapore, especially considering the year his challenger D Gukesh had.
However, being handed the underdog card must play right into the hands of a genius who has fought the tide repetitively to come out victorious more often than not, and Gukesh would have to be careful in negotiating the threat the Chinese prodigy posts.
- Location :
Singapore, Singapore
