Paddy Upton is no stranger to Indian sport – he has previously worked with the Indian cricket team that won the 2011 World Cup, the Indian hockey team that won bronze at the Paris Olympics, and has spent time working with Lakshya Sen, who finished fourth in the badminton men’s singles at the Paris Olympics.
That’s a lot of top-level success over the years, but even so, the scenes on Thursday night at the Equarius Hotel in Singapore – Dommaraju Gukesh falling into Upton’s arms in tears, hugging him and thanking him for being there with him – felt different. And not only because this was the first time Upton was seeing Gukesh in the flesh. The entire assignment was different for Upton. First of all, he told ESPN, he doesn’t usually work with athletes of Gukesh’s age. He was skeptical because people that young don’t really have the ability to self-reflect and, without it, he believed he wouldn’t have been able to make the impact that he has. Additionally, he had previously only worked with athletes in sports where their mind was their secondary asset to the physical attributes they possessed. In this case, he was working with Gukesh’s brain, his primary asset for his sport, but he was still playing a secondary kind of role, with the limited knowledge of chess that he had.
Upton had been sought by Gukesh’s team immediately after the Candidates tournament ended. Sandeep Singhal, founder of Gukesh’s sponsor Westbridge, had asked the player where he needed help ahead of the world championship. When Gukesh asked for the addition of a mental conditioning coach, Singhal contacted Viren Rasquinha, the CEO of Olympic Gold Quest, and asked who the first name that came to his mind was. Rasquinha recommended Upton, and the two had a chat initially, where Upton quickly concluded that it could be the start of a long-standing partnership.
“I don’t know what 18-year-olds these days are like, but what struck me about Gukesh was that he was so self-aware,” Upton said. What caused his skepticism in taking up the role ended up being his first impression of Gukesh after that chat. They then began regularly working together in April and met online once a week. Fifty hours of chatting later, Upton concluded that Gukesh was ready for the world championship. Their chats centred on the need to remain calm, how to deal with losses, how to react to wins, and what it takes to be a world champion.
“Most athletes don’t become world champions when they win the final, they arrive there at the start as champions,” Upton said. “Through our sessions, we needed to make sure Gukesh arrived there in that state of mind.”
In the three weeks leading up to the world championship, Upton was only revisiting what Gukesh had gone through earlier. That close to the biggest event of his life, it was time to stop loading his brain with more new information.
Upton said he didn’t initiate any conversations with Gukesh during the match. It was something they’d discussed earlier: If Gukesh had a problem during the match, he would call Upton. However, he didn’t call after the loss in game 1. Upton was very happy about it, because it meant Gukesh was confident that he could handle himself.
The first time Gukesh reached out to Upton during the match was after game 12, which he’d lost. It seemed a pivotal moment; he’d taken the lead in game 11 and then given it away 24 hours later. That conversation only convinced Upton of the supreme mental state that Gukesh was in.
There was also a housekeeping issue to resolve: Gukesh wasn’t sleeping well enough. Upton then asked Gukesh what the AC temperature in his room was. 24 degrees came the response. It needed to be colder, Upton concluded, so he told Gukesh to reduce the temperature to 22 degrees. Nothing ought to get in the way of Gukesh sleeping well.
Upton, though, was so taken aback by that conversation with Gukesh after game 12 that he decided to take the flight out to spend the final couple of days with him in Singapore. He judged it right, even though he was stunned at the manner in which Gukesh won. The fruits of Upton’s labour were in front of him, and here he was, soaking it all in, in the first chess match he’d ever watched live.
