The youngest team member, Ruslan Ponomariov, who recently turned 15, managed to win this game, allowing the Ukrainian team pass Israel and come in third in the team summary. Russia won the gold medal, and the USA was second. The Day phoned to Elista to question the head coach of the Ukrainian team Oleksandr Sulipa:
“We were fifth before the last round and had to play against the strong team of Armenia. Vasyl Ivanchuk and Oleksandr Onishchuk won their games and Stanislav Savchenko lost his. Ponomariov played last. By then the results of other games were announced, and it became clear that his victory would bring us the bronze. The game was pretty stable, but Ruslan continued to look for his chance and finally won.
The result was somewhat unexpected. Ivanchuk and I even returned our air tickets to stay and celebrate the victory with the team. I think our result could have been better, if we had trained before the Olympics”.
