Indian aims to roll with the punches to win Olympic gold

A CONFIDENT Nishant Dev has set his sights on bettering the shade of India’s boxing medals from bronze to gold at this month’s Paris Olympics.

Three Indian boxers – Vijender Singh (2008), MC Mary Kom (2012) and Lovlina Borgohain (2021) – have stood on the podium at the Olympics, all winning bronze medals.

But Dev is confident he has the skillset to not only reach the light middleweight (71kg) final but win the elusive gold medal.

“My target is to change the colour of the medal in boxing. Our country’s boxers have won bronze medals but not gold or silver till now,” Dev said during an interaction facilitated by JSW Sports. “I want to convert that bronze to not silver but gold. I have the confidence I can achieve this. I have trained well. But at the end of the day, it is up to God.”

The 23-year-old burst onto the scene in 2021 when he reached the quarter-final in his maiden World Championship appearance. Two years later, he won a bronze medal at the World Championships on the back of some stellar performances, including the unanimous-decision win against Jorge Cuellar of Cuba in the last-eight stage.

“That was my first international medal. So that is a big achievement for me,” he said.

Dev credits that quarter-final victory for boosting his confidence and eradicating the fear of facing boxers from traditional heavyweight countries like Cuba, the USA, Russia and Kazakhstan.

“When I beat the Cuban easily in the quarter-final, that removed the fear from my mind. I felt that if you are giving 100 per cent then you can take on and beat any boxer,” he revealed.

“So, the fear that I used to have when fighting against a strong country’s boxer, that is gone now. There is no pressure now. I just think, ‘no, he is just a opponent’.”

The Haryana boxer, who is a strong medal contender at the Olympics, had booked his place in the Paris Games with a dominant show at the final qualifying event in Bangkok in May. He had narrowly missed out at the previous qualifiers after losing to Omari Jones of the USA.

After going toe-to-toe in the opening two rounds, Dev had lost to his American opponent in the closing seconds of the bout, something that the Indian identified as his weakness.

“I used to get tired by the third round, but I have worked on my stamina, changed the strategy and even changed my body shape,” he added.