Gukesh’s humble in victory. he’s a great champion: Paddy Upton
Indian men’s cricket team when they won the 2011 World Cup. He played a role in the Indian men’s hockey team’s bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Now, he has helped Dommaraju Gukesh win the World Chess Championship.
Paddy Upton, the mental conditioning coach from South Africa, has indeed played a significant hand in the history of Indian sport and by his admission is “grateful for all the opportunities.”
Upton spoke to Boria Majumdar about how Gukesh readied himself mentally for the world championship. Excerpts:
Since joining team Gukesh, how did you go about getting him ready mentally for the World Championship match? We’ve been working together for a little more than six months now and we’ve spoken for an hour and a half or so every week. The idea was to make sure that Gukesh was used to every kind of possibility mentally. When you are trailing, for example, how do you make a comeback? How do you deal with such a challenge in the mind? Or when you are leading and your opponent makes a comeback, how can you make sure it doesn’t impact you adversely? How do you identify the best move on the board when you are exhausted? Many had said Gukesh was the favourite. We completely ignored that narrative and were determined to make sure Gukesh trained himself for every kind of fight from Ding. As you saw, he needed every bit of it.
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