When Santiago Nieva first started working as the coach of the Indian men's boxing team (he would later take over as the technical director of Indian boxing) back in 2016, he was doing so at a time when the sport was at its lowest ebb in the country. India had qualified just three boxers to the 2016 Rio Olympics -- the lowest number since the 1996 edition in Atlanta. "I didn't have any target of how many boxers we had to qualify for the 2020 edition but it was clear that just three was obviously too low," Nieva recalls.
Record haul
But while Nieva didn't have a target in mind starting out, he's more than happy with where things stand at the moment. At the Asia Oceania qualifiers that concluded on Wednesday, India wound up qualifying nine boxers for the Tokyo Olympics -- five in the men's categories and four in the women's divisions -- the best ever result. India will also have a chance to qualify boxers in the remaining four weight divisions at the World Olympic qualifiers, scheduled to be held in May.
"To have qualified nine boxers to the Olympics is a very good result. We are level with Kazakhstan as the Asian country with the most quotas. We have done better than Uzbekistan, which is seen as one of the strongest boxing countries in the world. We have also done better than at the last Asia Oceania Olympic qualifiers where we only had two quotas," says Nieva.
The improvement came despite the challenges posed by situations out of the teams' control. "In the last four years there have been many issues we have had to adapt to. The number of men's weights was reduced by two (from 10 divisions to eight) and the number of women's categories was increased (from three to five). We had changes in the weight categories as well," says Nieva.
Aggressive approach
Key to the team's success was a change in approach, helped in part by a change in rules that saw the judges scores being declared at the end of each round. "In the past we had noticed that our boxers were being too cautious the first round and that saw them losing points. This time we made a conscious decision to start out aggressively in the first round. Our target was to win the first two rounds and then the last round wouldn't matter," says Nieva. Of particular satisfaction to the team, he says, was the fact that in each of the bouts won by India's men's team, the result had been decided in the first couple of rounds.
Running out of steam
There was a caveat to this strategy, however. With Indian boxers looking to make the first couple of rounds count, they often suffered in the final round. Amit Panghal's first bout against Mongolia's Kharkhuu Enkhmandakh in the men's 52kg category saw him suffer a punishing final round. Manish Kaushik suffered a similar fate in his 63kg box-off against Australia's Harrison Garside. Both boxers had done enough to ensure the final rounds scores didn't count too badly but that was not what happened to Sachin Kumar, who lost his last couple of rounds to Tajikistan's Shabbos Negmatulloev after winning the first. "There is a risk of not having enough energy in the last round if you concentrate all your energy on the first two rounds. It was a risk that paid off for Manish but not for Sachin," says Nieva.
But while Sachin might have missed out on qualification -- as did three other boxers (Gaurav Solanki in the men's 57kg, Naman Tanwar in the men's 91kg and Sakshi Chaudhary in the women's 57kg) -- India will get yet another opportunity to qualify boxers at the World Qualifiers in May. This will, however, mean that the boxers would have to participate in fresh trials, tentatively scheduled for March 25 and 26. Nieva is hopeful to get even more quotas considering the performance of Solanki, who was the only boxer to force a split decision against world champion Mirazizbek Mirzakhalilov of Uzbekistan. "The fact is that we were helped because there were more Olympic quotas at the qualifiers [a necessity since there were no quotas on offer at last year's world championships]. But if the world championships had been a qualifying event, we would have won a quota since Kavinder [Singh Bisht] reached the quarterfinals there. But 57kg is a strong division for us, and I am hopeful, we will be able to qualify a boxer at the world qualifiers," says Nieva.
Standout performances
Apart from the record number of quotas won, what would also give boost Indian hopes were the fact that there were strong results from Vikas Krishan and Simranjit Kaur. Krishan qualified for his third Olympics and looked in strong form before being forced to miss his 69kg final owing to a cut above his eye. "Vikas has been looking very determined. He'd been out of the team for a long time but he's been able to prove his class here," says Nieva. While Krishan is a veteran of the ring, Simranjit will be making her Olympic debut at Tokyo and is expected to be a strong contender. Simranjit's ability to turn early deficits with her hard punching style is not new but coaches feel she has been able to bring more consistency to her results. "Simranjit has all the punches. She was a very good boxer earlier also but now she has more experience," says women's team foreign coach Rafaelle Bergamasco.
Missing out on gold
While India might have qualified a record number of participants at the Olympic qualifiers, the fact that none of the nine boxers were able to go all the way was a dampener on the results. "Of course, we would have like to have more boxers competing for the gold medals but that is not something that we are too worried by. The main goal at Amman was to qualify boxers to the Olympics and we were able to do that. We had two finalists and two of our boxers [Panghal and Ashish Kumar] lost their semi-finals by split decisions. So these were close losses. We will try to avoid making these mistakes at the Olympics," says Nieva.