Frederik Svane: An understated Olympic record

by Johannes Fischer
10/7/2026 – Two Olympiads, thirteen wins, seven draws, no defeats, two individual gold medals and a team bronze - Frederik Svane's Olympiad record is impressive. At the 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, he also set a low-key record: never before had a German player won two Olympiad gold medals for the best performance on his board. | Photo: Nils Rohde
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Before Svane, only one German player had ever won two gold medals at an Olympiad: Dr Robert Hübner. In 1972 in Skopje, he scored 15 points from 18 games, or 83.3 percent, to win gold on board one. Eighteen years later, in 1990 in Novi Sad, he won gold again. Hübner scored 7 points from 10 games on board one and therefore finished "only" fifth in the board-one standings, but with a performance rating of 2734 he achieved the best result of all Olympiad participants and received his second gold medal for it.height="1"

Robert Hübner in 1971 | Photo: Bert Verhoeff, Anefo

In fact, the rules for awarding medals for the best individual performances at Chess Olympiads have changed several times over the course of history. At the first official Olympiad in London in 1927, there was no fixed board order. The best individual results in the tournament as a whole were rewarded. A similar system was used in 1928, but in Hamburg in 1930 the absolute number of points scored was what counted. That is why Akiba Rubinstein, Poland's board one, won gold with 15/17. Had the medals been awarded according to percentage score, Alexander Alekhine, who played on board one for France, would have won gold with 9/9.

From 1931 onwards, however, the percentage score was decisive, although special rules were introduced from time to time over the decades. From 1984 through to 2006, not only were gold, silver and bronze medals awarded for the best percentage scores on the individual boards, but three additional medals were also awarded for the best tournament performance ratings in the tournament as a whole. This meant that a player could win three medals at a single Olympiad: one with the team, one for one of the three best results on his board and one for his performance rating.

John Nunn achieved this feat at the 1984 Olympiad in Thessaloniki. With England, he won silver in the team competition, scored 10 points from 11 games to win gold on board two, and also won gold for the best performance rating of the entire tournament with a TPR of 2868.

John Nunn in 1982 | Photo: Rob Croes, Anefo

In 2008, however, the additional performance classification was abolished again, and since then the best performance rating on each individual board has counted.

According to the OlimpBase database, neither Frederik Svane nor Dr Robert Hübner holds the German record for the most board prizes. That distinction belongs to Karl-May-Magazin publisher and arbiter Lothar Schmid, who won silver on board two four times: in Dubrovnik in 1950, Helsinki in 1952, Lugano in 1968 and Siegen in 1970. This comparison includes all players who represented Germany from the first official Chess Olympiad in 1927 onwards: during the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, for West Germany and East Germany, and for reunified Germany.

Lothar Schmid at the 1960 Chess Olympiad in Leipzig | Photo: Tournament book

But Schmid's record could also be broken sooner or later by Frederik Svane, who is only 22. The next Chess Olympiad will take place in Abu Dhabi in 2028.

At the ChessBase Olympiad stand in Samarkand: Frederik Svane shows Bahne Fuhrmann his round-seven victory over Isik Can from Türkiye

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Topics: Chess Olympiad 2026, Frederik Svane, John Nunn, Lothar Schmid, Robert Hübner
Johannes Fischer was born in 1963 in Hamburg and studied English and German literature in Frankfurt. He now lives as a writer and translator in Nürnberg. He is a FIDE-Master and regularly writes for KARL, a German chess magazine focusing on the links between culture and chess. On his own blog he regularly publishes notes on "Film, Literature and Chess".
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