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The June 4 phone call to the Asryan home brought good news to all of Armenia. Karen Asryan became the champion at the 37th Chess Olympiad.

The words “We won!” delivered by national team chess player Karen Asryan are still ringing not only in his household. Everyone in the country seems to be rejoicing at the victory.

Beating 147 other teams, the Armenians brought home the Hamilton-Russell Challenge Cup by collecting 36 points during the competition in Turin, Italy.

Levon Aronyan, Karen Asryan, Gabriel Sargsyan, Vladimir Hakobyan, Smbat Lputyan, Artashes Minasyan (coached by Tigran Nalbandyan and captaineded by Arshak Petrosyan) left behind even the Russian team, whose 5 players are among the top ten of the best chess players in the world.

Asryan, 26, like his teammates, learned chess at home, but his father never expected a world champion son.

“My father didn’t plan to have me become a chess player, he just wanted his sons to learn to think logically,” said Asryan. “He would teach my brother (who is three years older), and I would watch them and learn.”

Evidently, he learned well. At age 9, Asryan became the U.S.S.R. champion for children under 10; and at 13 was champion of Armenia for the 18 and under age group.

 “Before I was 17, I fully devoted myself to chess, training 7-8 hours a day,” Asryan remembered. “This is a sport that needs constant training; you can play brilliantly for several hours and loose the entire game with a careless error.”

In 1997, he finished school with a gold medal and entered the Chess Department at the Yerevan State Institute for Physical Education.

The champion does not consider himself to be a chess fanatic. He says there are things more dear to him – most importantly, family.

“I don’t think I have sacrificed anything for the sake of chess. This is my profession. It should take away from me not my entire life, but as much time as a normal person would give to his job,” said Asryan.

In the 20 years of his life devoted to chess, Asryan has played in several hundred tournaments. He mentioned that the victory in Turin (for which each player was paid about $17 500), shows the unselfishness of the Armenian team. “Armenians, unlike other teams, trained little, but they were more talented and managed to lead a true team play. They don’t try to attract individual attention; they always jointly share all chess secrets with each other. This tournament brought these aspects into light,” said Asryan.

After winning, Asryan wore the Armenian flag around his shoulders, leading his team’s victory celebration. “We were proud: no individual triumph can be compared to the victory of the title of Olympic champions,” Asryan reflected.

The team received a hero’s welcome, greeted late in the evening by dignitaries at the Zvartnots Airport, and by cheering fans outside the Opera House. “We expected to be met well, but not to such a degree,” Asryan said.

Asryan and his teammates confess that they have received lucrative offers to leave Armenia and play for other countries. Such thoughts, however, are totally out of the question. “We just don’t have the right to leave. It would be, mildly said, unjust to leave after all those things that were done for us,” Asryan believes.

After a few days of rest, Asryan is now preparing for a tournament in China. He is one of the five foreigners invited to compete there.