‘Don’t Have To Think About Money…’: Gukesh Opens Up On Family’s Financial Issues | Sports News
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D Gukesh beat Ding Liren to become the world champion in 2024, and his parents have played a huge role in his success.
D Gukesh became world champion in 2024 (Picture credit: X @tatasteelchess)
World chess champion D Gukesh has revealed how the past year has been great for his family financially and how they do not need to think about funds to travel abroad anymore, now that he has been playing constantly and earning prize money.
Gukesh beat Ding Liren to become the world champion in 2024, and his parents have played a huge role in his success.
Gukesh’s father Rajnikanth gave up his career as an ENT surgeon to accompany him to tournaments across the world, while his mother became the only earner of the family.
“I’m really glad that I could do this for my parents. More than the financial aspect, because throughout my career, I think they didn’t allow me to realise the struggles that they were going through, but they did go through a lot of financial struggles, and I remember like when it was around 2018, 2019, we were playing tournaments,” Gukesh said while speaking at the India Today Conclave 2025.
“My parents’ friends were sponsoring me to play tournaments abroad and it was quite difficult at that time, and we had a lot of help from very nice people and very selfless people who came forward to help,” Gukesh added.
The world champion, though, believes he still has a good distance to cover before being on par with World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen.
“I’m very honoured to have the World Championship title, but there’s still a long way to go before I can compare myself with Magnus or anything like that. So, it’s a positive thing that I have the World Championship title, but there is also someone like Magnus to look up to and work, set as a benchmark and work towards that,” Gukesh said while speaking at the Trailblazers Conclave in Kolkata.
“Other than that, I could improve in the other formats… rapid and blitz. Freestyle has also come up now. So, a lot of exciting things… When you have nothing to work towards, you get bored,” Gukesh added.
Gukesh and Carlsen are all set to clash again in the second leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025, to be held in Paris in April.