If FIDE planned the symbolism, it could hardly have done a worse job.
GM Javokhir Sindarov has been handed the Chess Olympiad torch in India, after the Global Chess League ended in Bengaluru, and entrusted with taking it home to Uzbekistan for the start of the 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad in Samarkand.
Someone really should have thought that through.
India arrive in Uzbekistan as defending Olympiad champions after their dominant gold-medal performance in Budapest two years ago.
And with just hours to go, the stage is set for the chess world to converge on the venue:
Uzbekistan, champions in Chennai in 2022, want that title back. And Sindarov will be the home team's main man trying to take it from them.
Then, barely two months later, he has another Indian possession in his sights.
The 20-year-old will face reigning world champion GM Gukesh D in Geneva from November 24, when he will attempt to take the biggest prize in chess, the classical World Championship, back to Uzbekistan too.
So naturally, India handed him the torch.
Sindarov received it from FIDE interim president GM Viswanathan Anand and All India Chess Federation president Nitin Narang at a ceremony in India on Sunday.
FIDE's account of the handover was rather less mischievous, saying simply that Sindarov "will travel with it to the Samarkand Olympiad".
There could hardly have been a more appropriate—or, from an Indian perspective, ominous—choice.
Sindarov was part of the brilliant young Uzbek team that won Olympiad gold in Chennai in 2022. Four years later, he returns as the World Championship challenger and one of the host nation's biggest stars.
Uzbekistan will be among the leading contenders in Samarkand, with Sindarov joined by GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, GM Nodirbek Yakubboev, GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov and GM Muhiddin Madaminov.
Uzbekistan will take some beating.