Nine-year-old Budhana Sivanandan, dubbed a “chess prodigy,” poses with her father, Sivanandan Velayutham, during an exhibition match in Trafalgar Square in London. Sivanandan has revolutionized the world of chess, and the British player is poised to become the youngest international player ever to represent England in any sport after being selected for its women’s team for the Chess Olympiad later this year, according to a report in The New York Times.
Since learning chess during the Covid-19 lockdown, Budhana Sivanandan has won a European title, qualified for this year’s prestigious Chess Olympiad and established herself as one of England’s top female players. Sivanandan turned nine in March, making her a prodigy from Harrow, London, who is also the youngest player to represent England at this elite level of chess and perhaps the youngest in any international sporting event. “I was happy and ready to play,” Budhana said in a phone interview two days after learning she had been selected for this year’s Olympiad, the sport’s premier international competition. She now has about three years to achieve her first goal: becoming the youngest person to hold the title of grandmaster, the highest honor other than world champion Abhimanyu Mishra, an American player who was 12 years, 4 months and 25 days old when he became a grandmaster in 2021. It is not uncommon to see children competing at high levels in chess.
The youngest player to participate in the 2022 Chess Olympiad, according to the International Chess Federation, is Randa Sidr from the West Bank city of Hebron, who was 8 years old at the time. That year, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, a 16-year-old Indian, defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen in an online tournament.
(Photo courtesy of The New York Times)
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