After the national camp for women in Delhi had to be disbanded due to COVID-19 cases among pugilists and support staff, six-time world champion M C Mary Kom and two other Olympic-bound boxers will practise at the Army Sports Institute in Pune leading up to the Tokyo Games.
Mary Kom (51kg) will enter Lovlina Borgohain (69kg), another Olympic hopeful, who is already at the facility. Simranjit Kaur (60kg) will train in Tokyo as well, but only after completing the COVID-19 post-recovery isolation.
To minimise the risk of infection, the boxers will be divided into three classes, each with two sparring partners. Pooja Rani (75kg), who has also qualified for the Games, will continue to practise at the Inspire Institute of Sports in Bellary, where she is currently based.
Mary Kom will be without her coach and former boxer Chhote Lal Yadav for the time being, as he remains in isolation after testing positive for the dreaded infection last month. After returning a negative test in the next few days, Yadav is expected to enter the camp.
"I am leaving today, looking forward to it. Chhote will come in a while so it will be fine. I hope to get vaccinated also during my time there," Mary Kom told PTI. "The training was thrown haywire after the suspension of Delhi camp but, hopefully, it will now get back on track. I might even train with the men boxers who are there at ASI, I routinely train like that to be in good shape," she said.
"It's a huge competition and one that we desperately need before Olympics. Training and sparring is one thing, but actual competition is something else. We need to test ourselves in the Asian Championship," Mary Kom said.
Raffaele Bergamasco, the High-Performance Director of Indian women's boxing, and Mohammed Ali Qamar, the head coach, were among the 21 campers who tested positive for COVID-19 on April 14 at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in New Delhi.
Bergamasco and Qamar have recovered, but they will not be joining the camp right away.
"With the Asian Championships and the Olympic Games approaching, our focus will be to utilize the time we have in hand and maximize the training ahead of these two events," said Hemanta Kalita, General Secretary, Boxing Federation of India. "Considering the safety of players, coaches, and support staff, we have created a training plan for players in separate clusters to minimize the risk involved.
"These are tough times but as much as we have to be careful we also have a job at hand and we are ensuring our boxers can get back to camp and start training and work to get the best results possible," Kalita added.
The Sports Authority of India has approved the ASI camp until the end of July. The Tokyo Olympics are set to begin on July 23.
Aside from the Olympic hopefuls, Arundhati Choudhary (69kg), Manju Rani (48kg), Sonia Lather (57kg), Lalbuatsaihi (64kg), Shashi Chopra (64kg), and Jasmine (57kg) have been selected for the training camp.
