Leko qualified comfortably from the B Group in second place to Evgeny Bareev and faced Alexei Shirov in a four-game match. This ended early with the score 2½-½ in Leko's favour. In the final of the Tournament Leko met Veselin Topalov, who had been in good form in the run up to the tournament but had a draining match which had gone to tiebreaks against Bareev in the semi-finals. The match was won by Leko 2½-1½, ensuring he became the official challenger to Vladimir Kramnik for the Classical World Chess Championship 2004.