A living legend of the Georgian chess, already a major
force in women's chess became world champion in 1978 at the age of 17 byovercoming another legend Nona
Gaprindashvili who herself is the first female player to achieve the
Grandmaster title. Chiburdanidze, followed her in 1984 and during her reign she
defended her title four times, against Nana Alexandria, Irina Levitina, Elena
Akhmilovskaya and Nana Ioseliani. She was not able to defend her title against
Susan Polgar in 1991 but continued playing at the highest level.
She achieved nine gold medals in Chess Olympiads with
former USSR and Georgia not to countmany individual medals she won during those campaigns. In 1997 she led
Georgia to win the European Team Championship. She reached semi finals both in
2001 and 2004 FIDE World Women Chess Championships and both times she lost to
the eventual champions Zhu Chen and Antoaneta Stefanova.
A sports hero in her own country most recently led
Georgia to the Olympic title in Dresden in November 2008 with a brilliant 7.5
out of 9 performance.
