A heart-warming father-son moment was captured after India’s D Gukesh defeated China’s Ding Liren in the 14th and the final game of the World Chess Championship, becoming the youngest world champion on Thursday. Gukesh’s father had tears in his eyes when his prodigal son came and hugged him. Even the chess champion couldn’t prevent his eyes from getting wet as he realised the big dream he had spoken publicly of as an 11-year-old. It wasn’t a straightforward battle for Gukesh but he fought valiantly to emerge triumphant.

“I just exchanged a few words with my father. My mother is not here but she will be flying in tomorrow. They have made a lot of sacrifices and I would like to thank them,” Gukesh said as the video of him hugging his father after the title win went viral.

“This was the dream that I had like more than 10 years ago (and it) has been the single most important thing in my life so far. So yeah, doing this for myself, for my loved ones and my country, it’s yeah, like there’s probably nothing better than this,” Gukesh shared.

Gukesh had famously dreamt of winning the world championship title as an 8-year-old. About 7 years ago, he had publicly cited his ambition of becoming the youngest world champion in the history of the game. He made that possible in 2024.

Dreams come true

Edit: Abhyudaya Ram #chess #gukesh #chessbaseindia pic.twitter.com/3axjqFd3m7

— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) December 12, 2024

“I mean it probably meant a lot to that 11-year-old then. Right now because I stopped paying too much attention to those numbers like I mean these records. But yeah, I mean there is this famous video clip of 2017-2018 when I said I wanted to be this youngest World champion and now that now that this is not just a dream but reality, it feels Very cool,” he added.