Harshavardhan wins U-18 open gold at online youth rapid World Cup

CHENNAI: International Master (IM) GB Harshavardhan won gold in the U-18 open category of the Fide online Cadets and Youth Rapid World Cup which concluded earlier this week. Tamil Nadu's M Pranesh won bronze in the U-16 open category. Apart from these two players, Ethan Vaz (silver in U-10 Open) and Mrinmoy Rajkhowa (2nd place in U-12 Open) won medals for India at the event.Harshavardhan, seeded 8th, finished second among 143 players in the preliminary stages of the competition. "It was a very tough tournament as some of the best U-18 players from across the world were part of it and I had to be on top of my game all the time," Harshavardhan told TOI. Harshavardhan made a huge impact during the knockout phase when he defeated the top seed Batsuren Dambasuren from Mongolia 2-1 in the quarterfinals. "That victory gave me a lot of confidence. More importantly, my performances kept getting better and better through the course of the tournament and I am happy with that," said Harshavardhan, a student of SRM College.In the last-four stage of the competition, Harshavardhan got the better of fourth seed Wang Austin of United States 1.5-0.5. The final saw Harshavardhan beating Spyropoulos Nikolaos, the seventh seed from Greece, 1.5-0.5. "This is one of the biggest wins of my career. The goal going forward is to become a Grandmaster and also improve my ELO rating," he said.In the U-16 open category, Pranesh lost 0-2 to Ramos Aranda Zahid of Bolivia to settle for bronze.