A silver in her World Championships debut at the age of 18 in 2001 and even almost two decades later, ‘Magnificent Mary’ is still going strong.
Six World Championship golds, one Olympic bronze, an Asian Games gold and a Commonwealth Games gold – it all makes MC Mary Kom not just India’s most successful boxer but also one of the best in the world.
In 2018, joking, Mary has said at a press conference: “There will never be another like me” and that may well be true because, even at the age of 37. While balancing her family life that comprises three young sons and a daughter, her boxing academy back home in Manipur and also her responsibilities as a Rajya Sabha MP, Kom continues to stamp her class and her dominance on Indian boxing even as she starts a new year of her life on 1 March.
But the coming week brings with it a new challenge for Mary, as she tries to extend her dominance by trying to qualify for a second Olympic Games.
Mary’s Olympic journey itself is a great example of how her single-minded focus on the medal, that has refused to let her get waylaid by setbacks. The Olympic Games added women’s boxing as a category only in the 2012 London edition, when Mary was already 28, but try to stop her from competing! In fact, fate did, when her favoured 48-kg category in which she had won 5 World Championship golds by then, wasn’t included.
The closest to her weight was the 51-kg event and well it just gave Mary a new target. She qualified for the Games as the only Indian woman boxer and competed against much younger and much more agile opponents. But her skills and strength helped her bag a historic bronze for India.
So now, she’s the only boxer – male or female – to win 8 World Championship medals, the only woman to win 6 World Championship golds, the only boxer to win an Asian Championship medal 5 times and the first Indian woman to win an Asian Games gold or a Commonwealth gold or an Olympic medal in boxing.
And now, starting 3 March in Jordan, Mary will get the first of two opportunities to book a spot in the Tokyo Olympics. As the Asia-Oceania continental qualifiers start on 3 March, Mary has been training in Italy along with 12 other boxers for this big event.
Six boxers from Mary’s 51-kg category can qualify in Jordan and if not there, then another seven spots are up for grabs in the World qualifiers to be held in Paris later this summer.
But with new vigour and an aggression almost unseen before, Mary will be looking to close out the berth this week itself especially considering the controversy she was embroiled during the national qualifier against Nikhat Zareen.
There were words exchanged, bad blood out in the open and a side of a champion not many needed to see. But, the job was done and now there’s another job at hand and another opponent to overcome.
Good luck Mary, 37 already looks great on you!
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