Chess Olympiad All-Time Winners List: Russia, United States dominate the competition

The 44th edition of the Chess Olympiad will be held between July 28 and August 10 in Chennai and it is the first time that India has bagged the rights to host an event like this.

More than 1700 players from 187 nations are going to participate in the biennial event which is the biggest chess tournament in the world. The International Chess Federation (FIDE) - which organises the tournament - gave India the right to host the 'Chess Olympiad' owing to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The first chess Olympiad was held in 1924 in Paris but it was unofficial, under the individual category. Attempts were made to include it in the 1924 Olympics but it failed because it was difficult to distinguish between amateur and professional players. FIDE was formed in 1924. In 1926, the second unofficial Chess Olympiad was held in Budapest, Hungary which was a team tournament, and was a part of the FIDE.

The 1st official Chess Olympiad was held in 1927 in London and the tournament was held. It was held annually and at regular intervals until World War II. Since 1950, the Olympiads have been held regularly every two years.

Let's take a look at the winners of the Chess Olympiad and the medal winners to date:

'#' During the 1976 Olympiad, the Soviet Union and other communist and Arabic countries did not compete due to political reasons.

'$' FIDE organised the online olympiads in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

'=' Russia and India were subsequently declared joint winners after several Indian team members experienced connectivity issues due to a global outage of Cloudflare servers in the 2020 Online Chess Olympiad.