CNN: Aronian is “David Beckham of Armenia”

Grandmaster (GM) Levon Aronian is a national hero of Armenia.

CNN wrote the aforementioned in an article devoted to the chess master, who plays first board for the three-time World Chess Olympiad champions and the former World Team Chess champions Armenia, and Armenian chess.

“When Levon Aronian walks down the street in his native Armenia he’s met by cheering crowds; restaurants insist he eats for free; new parents name their babies after him,” Sheena McKenzie wrote in her article adding that the 33-year-old is dubbed “The David Beckham of Armenia” by the foreign press. “Aronian isn’t an actor, activist, or astronaut. He’s a chess player—the fourth best in the world, to be precise. And in this tiny, ex-Soviet, chess-obsessed country, that means he’s also a national hero.”

“We’re not just a nation of people who struggle and fight. We’re also a nation of people who can come back to the days of our glory when we were a big country, a country who set new rules,” explained Aronian. “When you travel to Armenia you see all those monasteries, all those universities that are 1,500 years old and you always feel ‘this is what we are.’ We have been a nation that had a lot of intellectual capability.

“So I think what drove people to chess, is to bring back the feeling that we were once a scientific nation.”