India’s next great medal hope at the Olympic games could very well be in women’s boxing.

[NYT]

Chak De, Rakhi Balboa???
img: via NYT

The New York Times has a story on the emergence of a new career choice for women in less-privileged backgrounds in India, professional boxing.

Women’s boxing was not even an Olympic sport, until recently.

In a country with numerous obstacles for them, young women are gearing up to punch in the big league.
The International Olympic Committee earlier this month announced the entry of women’s boxing in the 2012 London Games. India was among the countries pushing to break the gender bar.

The Indian women are no scrubs in boxing either, having won a host of medals recently, led by Mary Kom, India’s most decorated boxer.

Kom is India’s greatest hope in the boxing competition. Since the International Boxing Association started the women’s world championships in 2001, Kom holds the record with four gold medals.
With relatively little support from the government, Indian women have performed surprisingly well in the world championships. China is India’s stiffest competitor. In the last championships, held in Ningbo City, China, the home team won 11 medals, followed by Russia’s 5, and 4 each by India and the United States.

Of course, one the primary objectives of professional women boxers in India is the search for a stable job with benefits – professional athletes in India often get lucrative government jobs replete with benefits like housing. But there are other factors at play here, uniquely desi factors like marriage prospects, for instance.

Preeti Beniwal, a 22-year-old boxer from Hisar, a small north Indian town, traced the change in her own family. In her mother’s time, for a decent marriage prospect, young women were expected to know how to knit and cook. Today, she said, the premium is on a woman who can earn a living. “Today’s generation is different,” Beniwal said. “If a girl is self-dependent she will get a good home, a good husband.”

But, above all, women are doing because they can. They are driven by ambition….

Hema Yogesh, 16, a spice farmer’s daughter, ran away from home to join her first boxing camp. Her father was furious at first. But soon, she brought home her first gold medal from a state competition. Her schoolmates showered her with garlands and cheers. Her father, she said, burst out in tears. She did too. He now wants her to compete internationally.
Boxing, Hema said, had taught her “courage.”
It also fueled ambition.

….. and the confidence it provides for real life situations.

For other women, boxing brings less tangible rewards: the confidence to go out on the streets without fear, for instance.

Like other professional athletes in sports not named cricket, the path to success is not without it’s fair share of travails namely lack of training facilities, nutrition and medical care.

Kom, having just returned from a training camp in Beijing, was quick to explain why. Even the coaches in China are fit, she said, and athletes are served meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. India’s modest sports camps serve meat or fish once a day. The athletes wash their own clothes by hand. There are no dedicated physical therapists for boxers who are injured.

Nonetheless, driven by a new found sense of freedom and purpose, these ladies are all set to transcend social and economic barriers, and maybe, win a few medals while doing so.

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