The 2002 FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov won his first world champion title in 1995 as the best player under 12 years. Two years later he was already U18 World Champion. At the age of fourteen, he was awarded the grandmaster title, making him the youngest ever player to hold the title at that time. He participated on the bronze medals for the Ukraine on the Olympiad in Istanbul in 2000, making the best individual result on board 2. In 2001 he won the Governor's Cup in Kramatorsk. As part of the Prague Agreement to reunify the World Championships he should play a semifinal match with Garry Kasparov, but it never happened.