Gukesh Dommaraju, the 18-year-old sensation, stunned the world, becoming the youngest-ever world champion by beating China’s Ding Liren in the World Chess Championship. Throughout 14 games, Gukesh showed remarkable mental strength and grit to maintain his resolve and emerge triumphant in the toughest of situations. Not many are aware, but Gukesh, while revelling in self-belief, also had someone else’s support heading into the marquee battle against Ding Liren.

Paddy Upton needs no introduction. The renowned mental coach to professional athletes previously worked with the Indian men’s cricket team during the 2011 World Cup win and guided the Indian men’s hockey team to a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In an extensive chat with Hindustan Times Digital, Upton opened up on working with Gukesh heading into the World Chess Championship match against Liren, highlighting the 18-year-old’s terrific mental resolve. During the conversation, Paddy also likened Gukesh to Rahul Dravid, saying the youngster’s mannerisms after the final showcase was a “masterclass in humility.”

Excerpts:

How ecstatic were you on seeing this amazing result on Gukesh’s part? The youngster faced a setback in the very first Game; how impressed are you with his resolve?

I’m so, so happy for him. It’s one of the highlights of my sporting career to have been here and watched him do that. But more importantly, from a distance, watch how such a young competitor has conducted himself over a gruelling and intense 14 days of an 18-day tournament. Ding played some unbelievable chess and really tested Gukesh’s skill to the utmost – to come back from a 0-1 loss in the beginning, then to go ahead and only to lose his lead. But to maintain such incredible composure, other than the first game, game in and game out, for 5, 6, 7 hours a game was just really remarkable and deserving of a World Championship title.

How did Gukesh prepare for the World Championship? Can you give a little insight into how his mind functions during preparation?

He was a consummate professional. He had what I would call a gold standard preparation, which means that he’s looked at every aspect that would impact his performance. He’s paid the minutest attention to detail around his eating, exercise, sleeping, working with his team, with strategy, with his tactics for, opening the ball, end game, his mental side of his game, his everything down to socialising, his downtime when he had rest time between games. He would even pay real attention to what recovery time looks like – he was making sure he’s getting enough rest and recovery but not too much that’s compromising his performance.

He just went through every aspect of his preparation and made sure that there was nothing that when he got to the end of the tournament, we could look back and say, damn, we should have got that a bit more right. And that’s what gold standard preparation is, when you project yourself to the end of the time and look back, make sure you haven’t made any mistakes. It might sound obvious, but there are so many athletes and teams who cut corners or over-prioritise or under-prioritise some aspect that they come to regret at the end of time. One of the big things was to be so professional that there are no regrets. Win or lose, no regrets.

In the previous games, we have seen Gukesh just going into his zone and meditating by closing his eyes. Do you think this ability to cut himself off from the outside world is what sets him apart?

That’s one of the skills that a chess player needs. Yes. With any athlete, what’s important is to be able to remain correctly focused and fully present. And particularly in a game that is almost purely mental and goes on for 6-7 hours, the ability to maintain focus is really critical, and very few people can stay fully focused with a volume of focus turned up on high and in the zone for six hours straight. What we call that in some sports is beingable to switch up and switch down.

You have times when you understand the next move; you understand all the options, you’ve done all the thinking you need to do, and then you just need to give your mind a little bit of a rest period. You close your eyes and that’s really just about taking all visual stimulation away. And it’s almost like a way of recharging, slightly recharging, and topping up batteries.

Going a little back, how did you get in touch with Gukesh? For how long have you been associated with him?

I started working with him in May and it was through his sponsor, Sandeep Singhal of WestBridge Capital. He reached out to see if I would consider working with Gukesh. Initially, I wasn’t sure about working with a chess player and working with a 17-year-old, but it didn’t take me very long to realise I was talking to somebody very special. And yes, I met him in person for the first time, and I hugged him as the world champion after the match last night.

You have, in the past, worked with the World Cup-winning cricket team in 2011, the bronze medal-winning hockey team in the Olympics earlier this year, and now Gukesh. Do you think you have a special connection with India? And secondly, how is working in chess different from cricket and hockey when it comes to mental conditioning?

I think over the years, I’ve been doing a lot of work in India since 2008, starting with the cricket team, up to the 2011 World Cup. But I’ve done a lot of work in the business context in India, just doing talks and workshops around sporting lessons for business. I’ve been involved in nine or ten IPLs. So, the relationship with India has just been growing and growing. The World Cup win first, then the hockey bronze, and now Gukesh’ win is the cherry oncake. But the cake has been baked over several years now.

My experience is that chess is not that different from cricket and hockey. The difference isn’t so much between one sport and the other. The difference is between personalities. I’ve worked with opening batsmen in the same cricket team whom I’ve worked very differently with, because they’re very different personalities. Take Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. They’re very different people. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are very different people.

Gukesh is a unique individual. And I guess the big difference with chess is that in all the other sports I’ve worked in, the primary skill is a physical skill and the mental skill is the supporting skill. Whereas in chess, your primary skill is the brain. So, the work that I’ve been doing with Gukesh is directly on his primary performance tool. That’s the central difference. But the actual content of the conversations is not very different. And the example that illustrates the fact that I know nothing about chess. The work I did in hockey earlier, I know absolutely nothing about hockey. I’ve never hit a hockey ball with a hockey stick in my life. But not knowing chess really didn’t seem to compromise the work in any way with Gukesh because I wasn’t talking to him about chess. He had an amazing team doing that. We were talking about everything else.

Can you enlighten us on what a normal session of yours with Gukesh would look like? Is there anything specific that you guys work on?

His role is to arrive at the conversation with questions. He would arrive normally with two questions. And it would take an hour and a half to discuss in great length the detail. And I would help him find the best possible answer to the questions he would have. So, it was always conversations guided by his questions.

That’s one of the things that made him such a joy to work with because he arrived with such excellent questions that directed the conversation into really relevant aspects of preparing for the Chess World Championship.

Do you think chess is one sport where mental strength is needed the most as one is always required to stay a step ahead of the opponent?

It’s slightly different having a brilliant strategy. If you don’t have a good enough strategy, you’re going to lose every chess match you play. But to support the strategy, you need to have your mind as focused as possible. And yesterday was a great example. The game was, according to everybody else – even the computer – going to be a draw. But in one moment, Ding’s focus wavered and he missed something important. So, it’s no different to cricket, you know. You can, in one moment, your mind can waver and you end up getting bowled or dismissed. So, the mind is important. And especially in the key moments of play, can you stay fully focused and present? There’s no better example than what happened last night.

You have worked with several high-profile names such as Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and MS Dhoni. Does Gukesh remind you of any of these stars?

There are similarities with other athletes. But in terms of what he’s accomplished, his levels of self-awareness by the age of 18, it puts him into a very unique bracket of athletes. The amount of accomplishment he has at his age, the maturity that he has, what really stands out for me is his ability to self-reflect, which is well beyond his years. The other thing that for me is always really important in the game of life is – it’s one thing achieving greatness on a sports field or on a chess board, but that’s fleeting success.

When somebody is a really high-quality human being with real values, with real morals, with real ethics, with real character, with real humility, then that’s when you get a great athlete becomes a true great for me. A great example is someone like Rahul Dravid, who’s just such a solid character and such wonderful humility.

Gukesh is one of those special human beings. He’s not just a special chess player. One only needs to listen to his last press interview. You’ve got an 18-year-old who’s full of emotions, who’s just won the world title, and he sat through, I don’t know, a 45-minute interview. It was a masterclass in humility where he was asked about how he felt, and he spent maybe four minutes praising his opponent. It was real. It was authentic. None of it was scripted. That shows a real respect and a real humility. When he was asked what were the real key moments of his journey that set up success, he immediately, instinctively went to speak about other people, to speak about his team, to speak about his family, to speak about his God.

Even when pushed to speak about himself, he still defaulted to speaking about the people who supported him along the way. And that wasn’t scripted. That was all off the cuffs. That was the real Gukesh there. When you have that in an athlete, you know you have someone really special. It’s not just a role model as a chess player. It’s a role model for every young Indian and every young athlete. So, for me, that’s what’s particularly special about Gukesh as one.

What’s the road ahead? Will you continue working with Gukesh, have you both had any conversations?

No, we haven’t had any yet. It’s all too new and too fresh. But we will chat about it. I’ll see him a bit later today.