India’s boxing queen and six times world champion Mary Kom has sealed her berth to the Tokyo Olympics after defeating Irish Magno of Philippines, 5-0 in the quarter-finals of the Asian/Oceania Boxing Olympic Qualifiers, in Jordan. With her win, India in total has won 7 quotas for Tokyo Olympics.
Recalling the day, this strong woman has said, “I love the winning, I can take the losing, but most of all I love to play...An unforgettable day of my life.’’
The High Gradient Rise: Early Career Life
Mary Kom used to take a good amount of interest in athletics, especially javelin and 400 meters running during her school days. She got inspired by Dingko Singh, a fellow Manipuri boxer returning from the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games with a gold medal and thus thought of
giving boxing a try. Of course, she was unaware of the fact that this decision would one day shook the world and she will become one of the leading faces of Indian Sports.
This ‘dedicated hardworking girl with a strong willpower, who picked up the basics of boxing quickly’, won the State Boxing Championship in 2000 for the first time and this paved the path of boxing for her.
After her marriage, Mary took a short hiatus from boxing but she returned back in style and won a silver medal at the 2008 Asian Women’s Boxing Championship in India and a fourth successive gold medal at the 2008 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in China, followed by a gold medal at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam.
In 2010, Kom won the gold medal at the Asian Women's Boxing Championship in Kazakhstan and at the 2010 AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Barbados, her fifth consecutive gold at the championship. She competed in Barbados in the 48 kg weight category, after AIBA had stopped using the 46 kg class.
In the 2010 Asian Games, she competed in the 51 kg class and won a bronze medal. In 2011, she won gold in the 48 kg class at the Asian Women's Cup in China.
On 3 October 2010 she, along with Sanjay and Harshit Jain, had the honor of bearing
the Queen's Baton in the opening ceremony run in the stadium for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. She did not compete, however, as women's boxing was not included in the Commonwealth Games.
Hardly any sportsperson has had such a graceful and stunning comeback in his/her career. On 1 October 2014, she bagged her first gold in the boxing at the 2014 Asian Games, held in Incheon, South Korea by beating Kazakhstan’s Zhaina Shekerbekova in the flyweight (51 kg) summit clash.
The only major international event where this golden girl had not won a medal was the Commonwealth Games, as her category light-flyweight was never included until the 2018 Commonwealth Games where Kom again proved the world her efficiency by earning a Gold gracefully in the women’s light flyweight 48 kg on 14 April 2018.
On 24 November 2018, ‘Magnificent Mary’ created history by becoming the first woman to win 6 World Championships, achieving this feat at the 10th AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships held in New Delhi, India.
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