US-Russia paradox: One eyes historic Olympiad gold, the other banned from playing

BENGALURU: For most of the 20th century, the Chess Olympiad was one of the few arenas where the Cold War actually played out on a board. The Soviet Union treated the biennial team event as a matter of state prestige, fielding lineups stacked with world champions and winning eighteen gold medals between 1952 and 1990.The United States, briefly dominant in the 1930s behind Frank Marshall's golden generation, spent the second half of the century chasing that shadow. They came closest in 1976, when it won gold only because the Soviets and their Eastern Bloc allies boycotted the tournament in Haifa, Israel, over FIDE's refusal to move the venue. Bobby Fischer's defeat of Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972 remains the sport's most mythologised individual clash, but the Olympiad was always the collective version of the same rivalry. Both sides were present.Fifty years on, the framing has flipped entirely.