China won Olympiad gold without its biggest stars.
No Ju Wenjun. No Lei Tingjie. No Tan Zhongyi. No Hou Yifan. A young Chinese team went unbeaten in Samarkand and took the Women’s Olympiad anyway.
China arrived at the 46th Chess Olympiad without four of the biggest names in women’s chess. No Ju Wenjun. No Lei Tingjie. No Tan Zhongyi. No Hou Yifan.
They left Samarkand with the gold medal anyway.
China finished the Women’s section on 20 match points from 11 matches: nine wins, two draws and no losses. A 3–1 win over Vietnam in the final round closed it out. Kazakhstan took silver on 18 points, and India took bronze after a 2–2 draw with Georgia in the last round.
It is China’s seventh Women’s Olympiad title.
The next generation stepped up
With the veterans missing, the weight fell on younger players. Two of them came home with individual gold.
Zhu Jiner led from board one. She scored 7/9, won individual gold on her board and posted the best performance of anyone in the women’s event.
Lu Miaoyi is 16. She played board three, scored 9½/11 and did not lose a game. That earned her individual gold as well.
Revenge on Armenia
The run included a win over Armenia, the team that beat China at the 2024 Olympiad in Budapest. This time it went the other way, and China did not lose a match all event.
Depth, not stars
Take four household names out of almost any national team and it stops being a contender. China took them out and still finished two points clear of the field.
That is the real story of Samarkand. The players who were supposed to be China’s future are already winning gold.
Elsewhere in Samarkand
The Open section belonged to the hosts. Uzbekistan won gold on home soil with 20 match points, beating Ukraine 2.5–1.5 in the final round. India took silver and Germany bronze, both on 18 points. Nodirbek Abdusattorov won individual gold on board one with a 2869 performance rating.
With 400 teams across the two sections, Samarkand was the largest Olympiad ever held.
The next generation isn’t coming. It’s already here.
