The Indian men’s boxing team, comprising the likes of Asian medal-winners Deepak Kumar (51kg), Shiva Thapa (63.5kg) and Sanjeet (92kg), left for Belgrade on Wednesday to compete in the World championships starting on October 24, hopeful of coming over the disappointment of an underwhelming Olympics campaign.
The three form the experienced core of the 13-member squad, which is made up of this year’s National champions. Of these, Thapa is the only one with prior experience of competing in the World event, having claimed a bronze in 2015.
Support staff
The boxers are accompanied by the support staff, led by High Performance Director Santiago Nieva and newly-appointed head coach Narender Rana, with former Commonwealth Games silver-medallist L. Devendro Singh as one of the assistant coaches.
This will be Nieva’s last assignment with the Indian team after the Boxing Federation of India decided against giving him a long-term extension at the end of the Tokyo Olympics.
The preparation for the Worlds has been far from ideal as the boxers got just about 10 days to practice in a camp after the Nationals.
The five men who competed in Tokyo, including last World championships silver-medallist Amit Panghal (51kg), could not make the squad after skipping the Nationals owing to niggles and “lack of preparation time”.
The squad: Govind Sahani (48kg), Deepak Kumar (51kg), Akash (54kg), Rohit Mor (57kg), Varinder Singh (60kg), Shiva Thapa (63.5kg), Akash (67kg), Nishant Dev (71kg), Sumit (75kg), Sachin Kumar (80kg), Lakshya (86kg), Sanjeet (92kg), Narender (+92kg).
