Good show by Indian boxers
Indian boxers once again proved their mettle in the World Youth Boxing Championships in La Nucia, Spain, and matched their performance of 11 medals in the 2021 edition in Kielce, Poland.
The women boxers managed two gold medals (Ravina-63kg and Devika Ghorpade-52kg) against the last edition’s count of seven top honours. Nevertheless, the overall women’s tally of eight medals, including two silvers (Bhawna Sharma-48kg and Kirti-81+kg) and four bronzes (Tamanna-50kg, Kunjarani Devi-60kg, Lashu Yadav-70kg and Muskan-75kg), was an impressive haul.
The men performed better in terms of the colour of medals. The count of two golds (Vishvanath Suresh-48kg and Vanshaj-63.5kg) and a silver (Ashish-54kg) was one less than the four claimed by the Indians in Poland, but was better than just the one gold the country got a year-and-a-half ago.
The increase in competition — around 600 participants from 73 countries — could be one of the reasons why the Indian boxers slipped on the gold medal collection. They won some keenlycontested fights through the newly-introduced bout review system.
“We had a 25-day camp in Rohtak. Even though we could not get the time to acclimatise, we trained in unusual hours to match the time zone of the host city. The result is satisfactory considering the increase in competition,” said women’s chief coach Amanpreet Kaur.
Men’s chief coach Vijay Kumar Sharma had similar views. “Some of our boxers lost close bouts. Our boxers are technically good and their performances were appreciated by the coaching staff of traditional powerhouses like the USA and Uzbekistan,” said Sharma.