GM Gabriel Sargissian
Bio
Gabriel Sargissian is an Armenian grandmaster who won three Olympic gold medals with his national team.
As a young player, Sargissian won the Under-14 World Youth Chess Championship in 1996. He won bronze at the European Junior Chess Championship in 1998 and the individual European championship in 2002. In 2000 and 2003, he became the national champion.
In 2006, Sargissian scored 10/13 (+7 -0 =6) on the first reserve board at the 37th Chess Olympiad and won gold with Team Armenia. Two years later, he repeated this success scoring 9/11 with a 2869 Elo performance on the third board at the 38th Chess Olympiad where he won both team and individual gold medals. At the 40th Chess Olympiad in 2012, he scored 7/11 on the fourth board and won gold with Team Armenia for the third time in his career.
Sargissian also won Olympic bronze medals in 2002 and 2004, the European Club Cup gold in 2007, the European Team Chess Championship silver in 2007 and 2015, the World Team Chess Championship gold in 2011 and bronze in 2015, and many club championships at the national level, which makes his trophy case unique.
At the 2022 Olympiad, Sargissian played first board following the departure of GM Levon Aronian to the United States. Sargissian led Armenia to the silver medal, scoring 6.5/10 for a performance rating of 2795. In the process, he returned to a 2700 FIDE rating for the first time since 2015.