Bengaluru: After a brutal, barren run for months, the newly-crowned women’s world rapid champion from India, 37-year-old Koneru Humpy, has reason to fall back in love with the grind. In an interview with HT, the world No.6 spoke about struggling with motivation, training without engines for the tournament and her seven-year-old daughter winning a gold medal the same day.

Excerpts:

It’s been an incredible second world rapid title for you. You started off by losing in the first round. How would you explain the remarkable turnaround?

For the past 8-9 months, whatever tournament I played in, was a failure. I was feeling very low and even considered quitting. Then I told myself that even if I quit, I should not quit like a loser. I wanted to prove what I could achieve. So, I was very ambitious before the tournament and trained hard for the entire month.

What is your approach to rapid chess, how much does the preparation differ? You seem to have developed a greater affinity for the shorter formats in recent years…

I’m generally more solid in classical. But in this event, I was ready for a gamble. Basically, for the last one month, I tried not to use engines. So, it was more of practical training, like solving puzzles and playing lots of training games and random online training games. Also, watching videos of games of previous world champions with their notations and everything, explaining the whole idea behind their decisions and strategic things like placing the pieces in key outposts and disrupting the pawn structure.

Actually, when I think about it, during my childhood too I won these national rapid tournaments, but I was always a bit of a seasonal player in rapid and blitz formats. In classical, I was always on top. I never really slipped. But in rapid and blitz I never really had a consistent standard. One odd tournament I might do well. So, that was a big problem. In the last few years, I’m doing pretty well in these formats. Even last year, I won silver. I was very close to winning the title. I don’t know exactly what’s working. Had I known, I would have put it to greater use.

You spoke of it being hard to stay motivated at this stage of career, does this win help?

Motivation has definitely been a challenge. Also, with age you don’t react as sharply. That’s where you lag behind. I pretty much overcame that here because even when I was having a fraction of a second, I could work out the best possible solutions. After 35, your career starts fading irrespective of which sport you play. Even though chess is a mental sport, your levels still drop. I’ve played many of these tournaments, and the participants are half of my age. So, to compete with them and win, I think is definitely special and gives me motivation to work harder on my chess.

How do you look at goals at this stage of your career? Is not winning a classical title a regret?

Basically, I don’t want to chase down anything. I just want to play good chess. Through playing good chess, if something comes my way, yes, of course, I’ll be happy to win those tournaments or titles. But for me, it’s more important to play the chess that people expect from me.

As for classical, I won bronze three times in the knockout World Championship. In some of the matches, I was very close but lost in a good winning position. I guess these things happen in sport.

For me at this stage, it’s sometimes tough to balance family and career. I often feel frustrated. I want to spend time with my kid, but at the same time I have tournaments to travel to, and for that I need to train. So, trying to make room for both makes me feel very depressed at times. When you win something, it’s all good. But when those wins aren’t coming, that’s the most difficult phase to overcome. It makes you feel what’s the point of leaving your family behind and struggling in tournaments.

How did you fight that phase, who do you usually turn to in such moments of self-doubt?

I think somewhere the determination inside me probably did not let me give up. I never wanted to quit chess on a bad note. I always wanted to leave with a beautiful memory. I’m not really close with any of the players and I didn’t really share what I was going through with any of them. I just take part in tournaments and head home. When I go back, I’m entirely with my family. It’s usually my father with whom I discuss the chess part of my life. Also, my husband. They’re both very supportive.

Your daughter Ahana is now seven. How did she react to your win?

She was super happy. Interestingly, yesterday, she also won a gold medal in an abacus event. When I called her in the morning, the first thing she showed me was her gold medal and certificate with her name on it.

How do you look at the next rung of women players in India?

Vaishali, Divya and Vantika have improved. But I think they need to leap much higher. They have been struggling between 2450 and 2500. They need to go further up in the ratings, only then will we have very strong contenders for world titles.