The present IBA ladies’s world boxing champion will go for gold on the Paris Olympics.
Two-time world boxing champion Nikhat Zareen is able to step out of fellow Indian MC Mary Kom’s shadow with a medal on the Paris Olympics, coach Blas Iglesias Fernandez has mentioned.
Six-time world champion MC Mary Kom has been the face of ladies’s boxing in India and her illustrious profession impressed a Bollywood biopic in 2014.
She received the flyweight bronze on the 2012 London Olympics to cement her legacy and introduced her retirement earlier this yr.
Zareen will make her Olympic debut within the 50kg occasion in Paris and Fernandez expects the 27-year-old to return with a medal round her neck.
“That is Nikhat’s time to show herself,” the Cuban mentioned in a Sports activities Authority of India (SAI) media launch on Tuesday.
“It’s true that she had lived within the shadows of Mary Kom however now it’s her probability to show herself and make India proud.”
Since 1990, Fernandez has labored with India’s high boxers, together with Mary Kom, and is the one foreigner to have received India’s highest award for a coach.
Presently India’s high-performance coach, the 68-year-old was notably happy by Zareen’s ring consciousness.
“I like the boxing (model) of Nikhat. She may be very clever. She has good ring ways,” he mentioned.
India might anticipate a second boxing medal within the ladies’s occasion if Lovlina Borgohain, who received the welterweight bronze on the Tokyo Olympics, might discover her “killer intuition”, Fernandez mentioned.
“Lovlina has to point out extra killer intuition,” he mentioned of the boxer, who needed to transfer from 69kg to 75kg after the Olympic classes had been revised.
“I’ve seen a few of her bouts and I feel she misplaced them as a result of Lovlina was not aggressive and proactive sufficient.
“If she will be able to field to her potential, she will be able to end among the many medals in Paris.”
India has bagged 4 ladies’s quota locations for Paris.
Fernandez was hopeful the male boxers would give a great account of themselves on the world qualifiers in Bangkok the place India can doubtlessly clinch 9 Paris spots.
“I reckon Nishant Dev and Amit Panghal can bag Paris quotas. They each have the potential to do that,” he mentioned.
“Males’s boxing may be very powerful and shouldn’t be in contrast with ladies’s the place the competitors is comparatively simpler.”
