NEW DELHI: Indian boxing legend M C Mary Kom has expressed a desire to represent the country for one last time before the six-time world champion is forced to retire in November this year after attaining the upper age limit to compete in amateur events.
Mary Kom, a London Olympics bronze medallist, will turn 40 in November and won’t be eligible to compete thereafter in international championships, including the Paris Olympics in 2024. She has been targeting the Hangzhou Asian Games in September-October 2023 as her swansong. For that, she is eyeing a comeback to the national set-up in April. Her last international appearance was at the Tokyo Olympics.
Mary Kom is recovering from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury which she had sustained during the Birmingham CWG trials here in June last year. “I want to play for India before I am forced to retire from international boxing. I am recovering well from my ACL injury and I am eyeing a comeback at the Asian Games. Hopefully, I will be fit for it as my recovery is going well. Very soon, I will be able to run and train,” she told reporters at a media gathering where she was unveiled as one of the brand ambassadors for the IBA Women’s World Championships, scheduled to be held here from March 15 to 26. The other brand ambassador is Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar.
While Mary Kom has been targeting an Asiad return, it may not happen due to varied reasons. The Asiad will act as a qualifier for the Paris Games. Even if Mary Kom manages to make the cut for the Indian team and goes on to win a quota place, she won’t be able to compete at the Olympics because of the non-eligibility due to her age, which will mean the Indian quota in her flyweight division will go to waste.
Besides, she isn’t part of the national camp and injury has kept her away from the boxing ring for almost 10 months. If selected for the camp, she will first have to go through the newly-envisaged ‘evaluation test’ process to find a spot in the ranking chart. And for that, she will have to go up against the likes of reigning world champion Nikhat Zareen and Birmingham CWG gold medallist Nitu Ghanghas for a place in the 51kg division.
India Open in July to be Mary Kom’s swansong
At the press conference on Monday, Mary Kom repeatedly expressed her wish for a farewell tournament before hanging up her gloves. Sources in the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) told TOI that the India Open tournament, to be organised in Guwahati in July, could very well see Mary Kom box on the international stage for the last time. India will field four teams at the event – India ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ – and Mary Kom would be a part of one of the squads. The BFI is expecting entries from around 40 countries and that will offer Mary Kom the perfect stage to play her farewell tournament.
Russia’s Gazprom offers prize money
The New Delhi Worlds will be offering a record prize purse of $2.4 million (Rs 19.50 crore), with the winners in each category taking home a whopping $100,000 (Rs 81 lakh). It’s been learnt that the entire tournament prize money has been sponsored by the Russian state-owned energy firm Gazprom. The government of the Russian Federation controls over 50 percent of shares of the gas company. Russian Umar Kremlev heads the IBA as its president and Gazprom is the world boxing body’s biggest sponsor as a ‘general partner’.
