OSLO, August 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian women’s team have won the 2014 Chess Olympiad in Norway's Tromso on Thursday, grabbing the title of the world’s champions for the third consecutive time.
The team of Russian women, who are the winners of the 2010 and 2012 Chess Olympiads, outplayed the Bulgarian team in the final encounter.
The team encountered some problems before the tournament kicked off in Tromso on August 1 as the organizing committee of the Olympiad earlier declined to register them saying that Russia allegedly failed to submit its application before the announced deadline of June 1.
The Russian Chess Federation, however, said that FIDE regulations did not stipulate any penalties for the failure to submit the application and the team could register for the international competition after the stated deadline. Eventually, in mid-July Russia’s national women chess team was granted permission by the FIDE to compete at the 2014 Olympiad.
The Russian women team is represented at the Olympiad, which wraps up today on August 14, by Grandmasters Olga Girya, Valentina Gunina, Alexandra Kostenyuk, Natalia Pogonina and former Ukrainian chess Grandmaster Yekaterina Lagno, who was granted the Russian citizenship less than a month ago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainian chess grandmaster Yekaterina Lagno on July 22. The citizenship gave her the green light to compete for the Russian national women team.
The 24-year-old chess player filed an application to join the Russian women team in March this year and was granted the proper permission on July 11. However, Ukraine voiced its objections concerning Lagno’s transfer with lawyers studying various possibilities to settle the situation.
Lagno was born in the Ukrainian city of Lvov. She later moved to the southeastern city of Kramatorsk and then Donetsk.
At the age of 12 years and four months she was awarded with the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) to become the youngest ever chess player to earn this title.
In the current capacity of full Grandmaster (GM), Lagno is the two-time titlist of the European Individual Women’s Championships (2005 and 2008), and she is the 2010 World Woman Blitz Champion and 2014 Women’s World Rapid Champion. With the Ukrainian national women team she won the 2006 Chess Olympiad in Italy’s Turin.