Читать книгу Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice - Matthew Syed, Matthew Syed - Страница 20

In 1980, at the age of five, Sofia won the under-eleven Hungarian championship for girls. She would go on to win the gold medal for girls at the world under-fourteen championships in 1986 and numerous gold medals in chess Olympiads and other prestigious championships.

But her most extraordinary achievement was the ‘Miracle in Rome’, where she won eight straight games in the Magistrale di Roma against many of the greatest male players, including the grandmasters Alexander Chernin, Semon Palatnik, and Yuri Razuvaev. One chess expert wrote, ‘The odds against such an occurrence must be billions to one.’ Kevin O’Connell, an Irish chess player, rated the performance as the fifth greatest, by man or woman, in history:

Sofia married fellow chess player Yona Kosashvili in 1999 and moved to Israel where they live with their two children. She now helps to run a chess website and is an acclaimed painter.