Women’s Boxing Nationals: Jaismine enters final, sets up summit clash against statemate Priya
Jaismine Lamboria has an impressive sporting pedigree but the 23-year old hasn’t always lived up to expectations. At the ongoing 8th Elite Women’s National Championships in Greater Noida, however, she seems to be on a mission.
On Wednesday, Jaismine stormed into the final of the 57kg with yet another referee-stops-contest victory in the second round, her third in four bouts here — this time against Vishakha Varitya of Punjab. The Services boxer from Haryana now has statemate Priya between her and the title, the latter winning her semifinal 4-1 at the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex.
The dominance isn’t really great for her future, shrugs coach Chhote Lal Yadav. Himself a two-time Asian champion, an AIBA 2-star coach and best known as the guy who helped Mary Kom prolong her career and win all those World titles, Yadav believes it isn’t helping Jaismine get better.
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“We train with boys at the Army Sports Institute but she will have to face women boxers internationally. Bouts like these not only show the gap in quality at home, they also deny her sufficient ring time and challenge to actually develop her skills. We are now planning to propose training in Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan soon, hopefully the government will clear it since she is part of the TOPS Development group,” Yadav said.
It’s a valid concern. Jaismine was among India’s top prospects at the 2023 Asian Games but had to return without a medal after losing to North Korea’s Won Un-gyong in the quarterfinals despite taking a 5-0 lead in the first round. She exited in the first round at Paris Olympics. Her team has since been working on both her body and mind to get her back on track, using her height as an advantage.
“She would start well but lacked aggression to keep up the fight or bounce back. She would backpedal when counter-attacked and that would be game over. Now we are working on reducing backpedalling more than one step, she is only allowed to go sideways, that allows her to keep control. We are working on increasing her strength and endurance to last an entire competition at the same intensity. Most importantly, we are working on the mind, keeping the aggression while being smart enough to also keep her defence tight. It will take time but she needs to test herself against strong partners to do that,” Yadav insisted.
Elsewhere, defending champion Minakshi continued her title defence with an easy RSC win against a nippy Sanjana in the 48kg while SSCB’s Sakshi stayed on course for gold with a 5-0 win against Savita of RSPB in the 54kg. Sonia Lather and Sanju set up a title clash in the 57kg while Simranjit Kaur and Neeraj Phogat will battle it out in the 65kg.