‘To share is to do’, as no Latin proverb dared to suggest. The 2024 Fide World Blitz championship, held in New York just before the new year, awarded gold medals to both Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi when their final match remained tied after seven games. The last three games were played in ‘sudden death’ mode, where any decisive game would determine the championship, and according to the rules they were to play on indefinitely. Carlsen proposed to Nepomniachtchi that they share the title, and they got the nod after a private discussion with Arkady Dvorkovich, the Fide president.
Disgruntled fans complained that there must be one winner because ’twas ever thus, and that sporting values were undermined by their backroom deal. It later emerged that Carlsen had shrugged to Nepomniachtchi that if Fide refused, they could just make short draws. Obvious as this loophole was, Carlsen later felt obliged to clarify that he was joking, in response to performative claims that his comment was tantamount to match-fixing.
Still, one must admit that the players were not breaking any records for endurance. So far that day, Carlsen had played 14 games, and ‘Nepo’ had played 15. Bearing in mind the nerve-shredding tendencies of high-level blitz, that is plenty but not excessive, and certainly no match for John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, whose fifth set at Wimbledon in 2010 went to 70-68.
A shared gold is not without sporting precedent. An iconic moment arose in the high jump event of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, in which friends and rivals Mutaz Barshim from Qatar and Gianmarco Tamberi from Italy both completed their jumps at 2.37m
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