R Vaishali claims bronze at World Blitz Championship to cap stellar year for Indian women in chess

R Vaishali ended 2024 in style, claiming a bronze medal at the World Blitz Championship after reaching the semi-finals at the year-end event at New York’s Wall Street.
Ju Wenjun clinched the women’s blitz crown defeating Lei Tingjie in the final. Vaishali had lost to Wenjun in the semis and finished behind the two Chinese women. In the men’s section, Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi agreed to share the title after both players won two games each in the final and three tie-break games were drawn.
After the Swiss section of the World Blitz Championship (from where the eight quarter-finals were selected), Vaishali had told the official YouTube handle of FIDE how she did not think she was a good blitz player. This despite the fact that she was a full point ahead of the pack at that stage.
The Indian went as far as implying that she had not expected to qualify for the top-8-player knockout phase in New York. She also pointed out that she had spent the past few days of what is her first visit to the United States recovering from a cold.
“Honestly, this was completely unexpected, the way the games went today (on the first day of the World Blitz Championship). I don’t think I am a great blitz player, honestly! There are many more strong players who are playing here. Today I was just lucky in many games and in the end, it worked out,” she told FIDE. “I prefer playing in classical tournaments any day over rapid and blitz. But rapid and blitz is fun to play. You go through a lot of emotions every day and you have to recover because you play multiple games each day.”
One of those games was against Russian Valentina Gunina where Vaishali made 23 moves with seven seconds or less on the clock. She went on to win that game despite offering a draw at one stage.
“In such situations, you cannot think. You just keep making moves. That Gunina game was just very bad time management from me. She was ahead on the clock and also on the board with one full pawn up. I offered a draw and she wanted to play on,” Vaishali added.
Praise from a legend
Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who has had a role to play in Vaishali’s rise through the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy (WACA), posted on X: “Congratulations to Vaishali for taking bronze. Her qualification was truly a power-packed performance. Our WACA mentee has made us proud. We are so happy to be supporting her and her chess. What a way to wrap up 2024! In 2021, we thought we would get stronger chess players but here we have a World Champion (Gukesh) and a bronze medall!”
Vaishali’s bronze capped off a glorious year for Indian chess — and Indian women in chess — which started with Vaishali and Koneru Humpy playing in the eight-women Candidates tournament in Toronto. Earlier at the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in New York, veteran Koneru Humpy had won the World Rapid Championship. Now in the fastest format on offer, Vaishali has added a bronze.
While most of the headlines in the year have been made International Masters Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal, Vaishali has had a quiet year her own standards.
After becoming the third Indian woman to claim the title of Grandmaster last year, Vaishali played a role in the gold medal-winning Indian team at the Chess Olympiad. But even there, it was Divya and Vantika who grabbed headlines with individual gold medals.
Now the bronze medal offers the 23-year-old the perfect springboard for 2025.

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