From world champion to national team coach: a major interview with Rustam Kasimdzhanov
From victory in Tripoli to working with the world's strongest grandmasters — Rustam Kasimdzhanov has gone from world champion to coach of the Uzbekistan national team. In this interview, he spoke about his students, modern chess, and the new generation of Uzbek players.
From World Champion to National Team Coach: A Major Interview with Rustam Kasimdzhanov
Rustam Kasimdzhanov spoke to Kun.uz about his victory in Tripoli, working with Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana, preparing the Uzbekistan national team, modern chess, and cheating.
In 2004, Kasimdzhanov became world champion, and years later, he transitioned into mentoring the world's strongest chess players. He has worked with Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana, and today he is helping the Uzbekistan national team, which he considers part of a new generation of players with a high level of confidence and ambition. According to the coach, modern chess players have access to incomparably larger volumes of information, which is why they start playing at a high level much earlier.
In 2004, after your sensational victory in Tripoli, the whole of Uzbekistan celebrated this success.
— To be honest, in 2004, it was not the first time I had met him. A few years before that, in 2000 or 2001, I had already received a state award — I believe it was "Oʻzbekiston Iftixori" ("Pride of Uzbekistan"). So, we had already met once. And in 2004, the meeting took place in an even more solemn atmosphere. Meeting the head of state after the World Championship is, understandably, always exciting and unusual.
Obviously, such things are never forgotten. At the same time, of course, I cannot share anything personal, because we did not communicate one-on-one in an informal setting. Our meetings were always official — surrounded by people, the press, and security.
I even wrote down a quote: "I am very glad that I kept the promise I made to you a few years ago in a letter written on the computer you gave me."
Apparently, yes. I don't remember all the details anymore, so many years have passed. But if you read that quote, it sounds like the truth.
— Yes, absolutely. I think that the Asian Youth Championship was the catalyst for me to start receiving more intensive support than before. In those days, a personal computer was an extreme rarity. Nowadays, everyone has everything.