Despite travel travails, Indian women hit problems for six in Serbia challenge
CHENNAI: Indian boxing has been cursed for many years and there seems to be no signs of it lifting. On a recent tour to the freezing Serbian city of Vrbas, India’s female pugilists had to borrow shoes and kits from opponents.
The women boxers’ plight comes just when things looked like they were getting better with a new federation in place (BFI). The senior women’s team, invited for the 6th Nations Cup, was stranded at an airport for almost a day and had to do without their luggage for almost the entire competition. Despite that, the team displayed plenty of grit to return home with happy faces, bagging a tally of six medals including one gold.
Making her bow in an international meet, Haryana girl Neeraj (51kg) was the lone boxer to bag gold. Sarjubala Devi (48KG), Priyanka Chaudhary (60kg), Pooja (69kg) and Seema Punia fought all the way to the finals to settle for silver while Kavita Goyat (75kg) claimed bronze. After a 25-day camp, the upbeat women had left the country with tall ambitions. But testing times began at the very start of their journey. After landing in Istanbul on January 9, they were supposed to catch another flight (Turkish Arlines) for Vrbas. But as luck would have it, they had to spend close to 24 hours in Istanbul.
“Due to heavy snowfall, all the flights were cancelled and we had nowhere to go. It was a chaotic situation. We were running all over the airport, trying to get in touch with the federation,” Gurbax Singh Sandhu, the chief coach, recalled. After a long wait, they finally managed to catch another flight the next morning and it looked like their ordeal was over. However, when they landed in Serbia, the team realised that their luggage were missing.
“It was a big blow but fortunately all the boxers had their basic equipment in hand baggage. But all the medical books were in the luggage,” Sandhu revealed. “Thankfully, the organisers were highly cooperative and allowed us to compete without the medical books.”
Boxers like Sarjubala managed to handle the situation very well. “We were without our kits, clothes. We borrowed some kits/shoes from our international counterparts. The conditions were testing too. Our luggage only arrived on the day of the finals,” she said.
“We tried to put it on the back of our minds and focused on boxing. We still managed to end up with six medals and that was really good,” the 2014 World Championship silver medallist, added.
anmol@newindianexpress.com