Achievements
Valentina Golubenko was born to a chess family. Her father, Valery Golubenko is a mathematician and chess player who won 1993-1995 championship of Estonia in rapid chess and a triple winner on board one in Estonian Team Championships. Valentina's mother, Anastasia Golubenko was a qualified chess coach with many years of experience, making the finals of the Moscow women’s championship in 1986.
Valentina was coached by her parents and very soon showed amazing chess talent. She won the Estonian championship in different age categories – three times for girls under 10 (1998–2000), once for boys under 10 (1999), five for girls under 12 (1998–2002), four for girls under 14 (2001–2004); twice for girls under 16 (2003–2004); and once for girls under 18 (2004). She was the rapid chess champion six times (for girls in 2001-2005 and for boys in 2007); and command champion for boys (2003) and for girls (2003 and 2004). In six of those tournaments she obtained 100% score by winning all the games. She also obtained high results on a number of international tournaments. In the European Chess Championship in Dresden in April 2007 Golubenko shared 5..19 places and qualified for the grandmaster title. She officially received this title in Antalya in November 2007, becoming the first ever resident Estonian woman to receive it.
On October 2008 Valentina Golubenko won the Gold Medal of the World Youth Chess Championship in the Girls Under 18 category. She received 9 points out of a theoretically possible 11 and was ahead of the Silver Medal winner, R. Preeti from India, by one point. She also participated in the Women's World Chess Championship 2008 but lost to Viktorija Čmilytė from Lithuania in the first round.
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Famous quotes containing the word achievements:
“When science, art, literature, and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality, they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man’s name live for thousands of years. But above this level, far above, separated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“There are some achievements which are never done in the presence of those who hear of them. Catching salmon is one, and working all night is another.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)