Tracing boxer Lovlina Borgohain’s meteoric climb to the Olympic podium
After Vijender Singh and Mary Kom, Lovlina Borgohain is the third Indian boxer to win a medal at the Olympic Games.
Indian boxing among women was all about MC Mary Kom and her legendary exploits until Lovlina Borgohain arrived.
Coming from a small village of Baromukhia in the Golaghat district of Assam, Lovlina Borgohain has steadily climbed the ladder of success, even emulating a bit of Mary Kom’s feats.
A lithe Lovlina Borgohain scripted history when she won the women’s 69kg bronze medal at Tokyo 2020, becoming the third Indian boxer to win a medal at the Olympics after Vijender Singh (bronze at Beijing 2008) and Mary Kom (bronze at London 2012).
But it took a decade of focussed, unrelenting effort from Lovlina to go from the streets of Golaghat to the podium at Tokyo Summer Games.
Coach Padum Boro spots Lovlina Borgohain
Before making a name in the world of boxing, Lovlina Borgohain practised a form of kickboxing called Muay Thai along with her two elder sisters.
While her siblings continued Muay Thai, Lovlina leaned towards boxing after catching the attention of coach Padum Boro at a boxing trial conducted by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in 2012.
“I took a few tests of her like punching the bag, fast punching and she did well on those parameters. I thought she could be made into a boxer,” Padum Boro told Olympics.com.
Padum Boro’s instincts were correct as Lovlina Borgohain quickly made her mark, winning the junior national championship in 2012 and a silver at the 2013 Nation’s Women’s Junior Cup in Serbia.
The switch to the senior circuit met with success too. Lovlina enjoyed an impressive run from 2017, starting with bronze medals at the Asian championships and the President’s Cup in the same year.
Lovlina Borgohain’s purple patch saw her winning back-to-back bronze medals at the world championships in 2018 and 2019 before the run was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The health crisis might have brought the world to a standstill but Lovlina kept putting in the hard yards to make her Olympic debut in Tokyo.
Lovlina Borgohain’s Olympic medal: Bronze on debut
"The Olympics have been my parents' dream and I am working towards it,” Lovlina Borgohain had told DNA.
In March 2020, Lovlina took her first step towards that dream by booking her ticket to Tokyo 2020 after reaching the top four at the Asian boxing Olympic qualifiers in Amman, Jordan.
Lovlina Borgohain defeated Uzbekistan’s Maftunakhon Melieva in the quarters of the qualifiers to become one of the nine Indian boxers who would compete at the Tokyo Olympics.
From those nine, only Lovlina Borgohain returned with a medal from Tokyo 2020.
Lovlina started her Tokyo Olympics campaign with a hard-fought 3-2 split decision victory over world championship medallist Nadine Apetz from Germany in the round of 16.
Only one win separated Lovlina from getting an Olympic medal.
In the quarters, Lovlina was up against former world champion Chen Nien-Chin of Chinese Taipei, an opponent the Indian had failed to beat in her last three attempts.
However, this time, it was Lovlina that walked out of the ring victorious.
The Indian boxer used her height advantage and landed some heavy hooks and jabs to make her way to the semi-finals with a 4-1 split win.
Although Lovlina Borgohain lost to world champion and eventual gold medallist Busenaz Surmeneli in the semis, reaching the top four had guaranteed the Indian a medal since two bronze medals are awarded in boxing.
The medal-winning feat put Lovlina Borgohain amongst some of the greatest boxers in the world that have won an Olympic medal as well as a world championship medal.