Not long after her return to India from the Asian Boxing Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where she won gold in the women’s 54kg category, Preeti Pawar told  Sportstar how she was looking forward to spending time with her family in the boxing town of Bhiwani in Haryana.

“For the last three months before the Asian Championships, I was in the national camp. All the girls were missing  ghar ka khana (home-cooked meals). I’m looking forward to eating my mother’s  roti, churma and  halwa. I can enjoy that food a little bit now,” the 22-year-old said.

The treats are well deserved. Preeti had a spectacular tournament in Ulaanbaatar, beating two Olympic medallists — Korea’s Im Aeji and Taiwan’s Huang Hsiao-wen — to win her first continental championship.

But Preeti is clear that while she’ll savour, she won’t really indulge. Her mind is already preparing for the next national camp, which will begin in Patiala in the last week of April. “I know that I only have a few days at home. After that, I have to get into the same mindset of competition. I’ve done well at the Asian Championships, but now I will be preparing for the Commonwealth and Asian Games. There will be a lot of expectations on me there,” she says.

Great expectations

In Mongolia, every single member of the women’s team finished on the podium — 10 medals in all, including four gold, two silver and four bronze. The result was Indian women’s boxing’s best (in terms of medal count) at the Asian Championships in over two decades. The men settled for six overall, with one gold.

Coach Santiago Nieva says the result was even better than what he had been hoping for. “We had pretty high expectations going in, considering we already had two boxers who had won world championship gold last year [Jaismine Lamboriya in the women’s 57kg category and Meenakshi Hooda in the women’s 48kg class]; but we exceeded them.

“We wanted to position ourselves as one of the top teams, which we did by finishing on top of the medal tally. We knew we needed to get boxers into the final and convert those finals into gold medals. We had six boxers in the final and we won four of those bouts,” says Nieva. While India had also won four gold medals at the 2022 edition, just one medal came in an Olympic weight division — Lovlina Borgohain in the women’s 75kg category. This year, three of the four golds were in Olympic weight classes, where competition is the highest. More than the gold medals, it is the nature of the results that enthuses Nieva, who had previously been high-performance director with Indian boxing and later worked with the Australian national squad before joining the women’s team at the start of the year.

Mission control: “Our goal is to create high-performance athletes who are also experts at boxing, rather than boxers with a poor physical base,” says Santiago Nieva, the coach of the Indian women’s boxing team. | Photo Credit: AFP

Winning where it counts

“I think when you look at results from earlier years, you’d notice that a lot of the gold medals came in non-Olympic categories, in which the top boxers often don’t take part. To win gold in Olympic weight classes is a very positive sign for us. We faced some of the top-level boxers from Asia, many of whom have won world titles. Not only did we beat them, we beat them convincingly. It shows we are on the right track,” says Nieva.

With boxers from Asia winning 14 of the 24 medals in the women’s divisions at the 2024 Olympics and 21 of the 40 medals at last year’s world championships, Nieva believes the result from the Asian Championships is a statement of Indian women boxers’ potential beyond the continental level.

“For the last 10 years or so, Asia has emerged as the strongest continent in women’s boxing. Earlier it was mostly China, North Korea, Taiwan and Thailand that were very strong, but in the last couple of years, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have produced some world-class talent. So if you are winning in Asia, it’s not too different from winning at the world level,” he says.

While the medals are welcome, Nieva says it is important not to forget the work that made the result possible. “When I came to the national camp at the start of the year, I felt I already had a lot to build from. But I feel that our training discipline — the way we push ourselves in each session — has improved significantly,” he says.

Over the past few months, Nieva says the team has been focusing on building what he considers high-performance athletes. “When we train, we have a purpose in mind. What our team believes in is the most important attribute of modern boxing — high-level aerobic endurance. We want that physical quality in our boxers because enduring hard training sessions is very tough on the body and can lead to injuries. Our goal is to create high-performance athletes who are also experts at boxing, rather than boxers with a poor physical base,” he says.

Improving future chances

The results from the Asian Championships will have more than just confidence-boosting benefits. “There are a lot of ranking points from this tournament. That will help me in the future because it will improve my seeding in important events,” says Priya Ganghas, who won gold on her international debut in the women’s 60kg category. “Even though I know I can take on any boxer, boxing is a game where one punch can change everything. It’s better to meet the top boxers in the medal rounds rather than in the opening rounds.”

“If we are competing against a good opponent, then obviously we have to be sharp all the time. At an early stage in a new environment, this isn’t always easy because we aren’t always habituated that fast. So if you face the best boxers in the semifinals or finals, things become easier because you have time to get into your rhythm,” says the 20-year-old.

While Nieva believes the team is on the right track, he says it is important not to get carried away. “I think we should see this as a great result, independent of how we do in the next competition. But of course, this year the main goals will be the Commonwealth Games and especially the Asian Games.

“If we don’t achieve a similar result at the Asian Games, we will be disappointed. We know it will be tougher. Some of the opponents who lost will come back stronger, and some of us who won in Mongolia might get a tougher draw or have things not go perfectly,” he says.

Although Preeti went on to beat two Olympic medallists, she had a tough opening round in her first bout against former U-22 Asian champion Elina Bazarova of Kazakhstan. And while she has an Asian title, her hunger remains. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

This is why, before the team left for a short break after the Asian Championships, Nieva reminded them that the job was not done. “According to the selection criteria of the Boxing Federation of India (BFI), only the boxers who won gold or silver are assured of a place in the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games teams. Everyone else, including the bronze medallists — and even two-time world champion Nikhat Zareen and Olympic medallist Lovlina Borgohain — will have to go through another assessment in May,” he says.

Even the boxers who have cemented their places know there is work to do. “From a technical and tactical point of view, there are still many things to work on. There were bouts that became very messy, with holding, wrestling and boxers falling to the floor. We were not always able to solve those situations or come back from that.

“We know we have to improve so that we don’t have to depend on luck to win close bouts. Right now, a lot of boxers had their best days in the final. But there were also bouts where our boxers had a bad day, and that wasn’t enough to win. We want to improve our baseline so that even on a bad day, it is still good enough to get the win,” he says.

At least one boxer has the confidence that her bad day is still good enough at the continental level. Although she went on to beat two Olympic medallists, Preeti had a tough opening round in her first bout against former U-22 Asian champion Elina Bazarova of Kazakhstan.

“I actually lost the first round on all five scorecards, but fought back to win the next two rounds 5-0 and take the bout. When you lose the first round so convincingly, it’s hard to come back, but I know now that I can change the bout situation anytime,” she says.

But as she readies to return to the national camp, Preeti says she doesn’t want to be in a similar situation in the tournaments to come. And while she has an Asian title, her hunger remains.

“I might have won gold at the Asian Championships, but right now the goal is to repeat my medal at the Asian Games. What I’ve done is not enough,” she says.

Published on Apr 22, 2026