USA!

40 years. That is the interminable time that took the US to win again. Today, with the last round's win over Canada, the US team grabbed the gold medal at the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku, Azerbaijan. Back then in 1976, it was  Byrne, Kavalek, Evans, Tarjan, Lombardy;  today's team, led by coach Aleksandr Lenderman, is one of the strongest squad ever, with three top players on the first three boards: Caruana, Nakamura and So, and a strong Sam Shankland on fourth. Ray Robson, who would make it as first board in many teams, is the golden 5th boards of the dream-team.

 The result was in doubt until the very last game, mostly because the tiebreak system is somewhat complicated, and the socials were thriving with posts by the fans, who didn't know yet whether the 40-year-long fast was over for the United States of America. Wesley So won Gold for Board 3 and Caruana Bronze for board 1.

 Ukraine finished second on tiebreaks and Russia third. Karjakin, Kramnik, Grischuk, and a stellar Nepomniachtchi were expected to do better,  but they stumbled over a terrific Ukraine team, and could not win against the strong India team (4th) and against the winners, the US team.

 Norway finished 5th, which is a historical result for the world champion's motherland. Carlsen performed pretty well (7.5/10), which is not usual, as usually he doesn't do amazingly well in team events, and his young teammates played really strong, especially the young GM Tari Aryan (b. 1999). Carlsen congratulated his teammates with a Tweet, and then joked about how strong his "squad" could be.

A special mention goes to GM Eugenio Torre of the Philippines: at the green age of 65, this living legend played all the 11 games, collecting 10 points and achieving a rating performance of 2836!

Here is a LINK to download the complete list of results.

China, led by world Champion Hou Yifan, won the Women's tournament, ahead of Poland and Ukraine. The USA Team, captained by Robert L. Hess, finished tied for fourth place, which is an excellent result.

ICC has relayed the top 10 matches of this amazing event, and here is GM Ronen Har-Zvi's fantastic video recap: