Why a 17-year wait continues in men’s boxing

Several things happened around Indian boxing recently: Santiago Nieva, its former high-performance director (2017-2022) returned as women’s coach, the senior nationals were rescheduled within nine hours of being announced and more personally, a document with a startling independent test result around some elite men showed up on email.

- Sharda Ugra

Nieva’s first statement was around wanting Indian boxers going “beyond a solitary bronze at the Olympics.” The single Olympic boxing bronze stings the men more than the women. Since Vijender Singh in Beijing 2008, no Indian man has won an Olympic boxing medal across 17 years and four Games and Amit Panghal’s 2019 World Championship silver remains India’s only significant global medal from a male boxer. The combat sport ready for takeoff in 2008 is now a distant cousin to wrestling. There are many reasons for this paucity but the test result document points to one and raises a question.

The document, which HT has seen, provided results of a study undertaken on several elite boxers who returned from long, national camps with their physical, competitive capacity diminished rather than enhanced. Tests done on a few elite boxers showed that their VO,max (aerobic capacity) reduced after attending lengthy camps around big competitions - in one case down by 8.7%. This meant that the male boxers tested had entered big competitions (the raison d‘etre of camps) functioning on less lung power than when they first entered the camp weeks prior.

We'll understand VO,max later but first, to camps. Boxers from states, institutions, academies, armed forces are chosen from feeder competitions for national camps in NIS, Patiala. Between four and six boxers each in men’s and women’s across 10 Olympic and non-Olympic weight categories — minimum 40 men, 40 women — are now in contention to represent India at major events.