Turkmen schoolgirls won two bronze medals at the World Chess Championship in Greece
16.04.2025 | 20:55 |
From April 13 to 15, the city of Rhodes, Greece, hosted the World Children's and Youth Rapid Chess Championship. Our compatriots - 7-year-old schoolgirl from Mary velayat Anna Charyeva and 14-year-old Jahan Rejepova from Lebap velayat brought two bronze medals to our country's collection.
In the category among girls under 8 years old, Anna scored 8 points out of 11 possible, losing only to the future champion from Kazakhstan Alisha Bissalieva and silver medalist from India Anvi Diipak. Anna, a 2nd-grader at Mary Secondary School No. 25, is the protégé of Honored Coach of Turkmenistan Ejegyz Yalkanova and the young promising coach Serdar Yalkanov.
Jahan also scored 8 points in the U16 category for girls. In the second round, Jahan was able to win against the future tournament champion Elnaz Kaliakhmet (Kazakhstan) and was leading after 5 rounds, but in the 6th round, she lost to the future silver medalist of the tournament from Russia, Irene Lutsinger. After another defeat in a row from the Vietnamese athlete, Jahan was still able to pull herself together and finish in the top three. Let us recall that in February of this year, Jahan became the youngest national champion among women in the history of Turkmen chess. She also successfully performed at the recently completed Asian Zonal Championship (Zone 3.4) in Kazakhstan, taking a worthy 4th place in the cohort of the strongest chess players in the region. The 9th-grader of Secondary School No. 41 in Turkmenabat trains under the guidance of experienced coach Zumrat Achilova.
Our other compatriots also competed for prize places at the finish of the tournament.
In the category among girls under 18, Leyla Shokhradova (Lebap) scored 7 points out of 11 possible and lost the bronze medal only due to additional indicators. As a result, Leyla ended up in 5th place in the tournament table.
In the category among girls under 12, after the 9th round, Nurana Soyunova, a student of the Chess Academy "Küşt Älemi", was in 4th-6th places, but in the 10th round Nurana was defeated by the future champion from Russia Alisa Junker and ultimately had to settle for 7th place.
It is also worth noting the confident performance of the youngest star of Turkmen chess from the Lebap velayat, 6-year-old Khangeldy Muradov, who is also the youngest of 433 participants from 48 countries. In the category of boys under 8, Khangeldy beat players a year and even two years older than himself and scored 6.5 points out of 11 possible. As a result, the Turkmen prodigy took 12th place out of 48 participants.
On April 16, a blitz tournament started in Rhodes, where our athletes have the same good chances to repeat, or even improve on, their successful performance in the rapid tournament.
Tournament data is available at the link
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