New Delhi: The Indian Junior (Sub-Junior) boxers who have been training at the National Coaching Camp at the SAI centre in Sonepat, Haryana, for the last couple of months, are now all set to start their season and partake in their first major tournament with the continental junior championships. A 10-member team including nine boxers and 1 coach left the capital city of New Delhi on Saturday (13 Apr 2013) for the ASBC Asian Junior Boxing Championships to be played at Shymkent in South Kazakhstan.
Boxing at this level is traditionally the first opportunity to witness future world champions and Olympic heroes in the making. The week long Asian meet will give young Indian glove men an opportunity to tread on the lines of their senior counter parts and perform at the continental arena. The event will also sever as an excellent preparatory platform for the AIBA Junior World Championships which is scheduled to be held at Kiev, Ukraine in August.
As per Coach-in-Charge Mohinder Singh Dhaka, who has been handling the reins of the Indian colts for over a decade now, the beginning of the season plays a very crucial role in identifying potential champions. He said, “Every two years we have a fresh batch of boxers that we have to nurture and build into professional athletes. This would be the first major tournament and a big test for the selected boxers; this is where we get to see the mental make-up of a boxer and how capable one might prove to be in the long run”.
The sub-junior national coach further added, “The Asian championships will see some strong teams take part and therefore will be good tournament for the boys. It will also help our boxers to get into a rhythm before the World Junior Boxing Championships later this year”.
India will enter the Asian Junior Boxing Championships with nine boxers, looking to make their mark in the continental rings. The team consists of players who have performed exceptionally well at the sub-junior national circuit.
Although the young pugilists are fairly inexperienced, coach Dhaka has high expectations from them and believes the team will come good at the Asian competition. Talking about the teams’ composition he stated, “It is a fresh team with very little international experience, in-fact for three of the selected boxers this will be their very first international tournament. But they are talented lot and have worked very hard at the training camp to make a place in the national team; I am counting on them to do well at the Asian Championships”.
The Indian boxers to look out for at the event will be 15 year old Varinder Singh (48kg), who bagged the gold medal at the 28th Sub-Junior National Boxing Championships last year. Singh, playing his first international tournament, will be looking begin his international career on a high with a good performance in Kazakhstan.
Multiple sub-junior national champion L Bhimchand Singh (50kg), will be another one to watch out for in Shymkent. He was a part of the sub-junior Indian boxing team that went to Yangiabad, Uzbekistan for a three week long training-cum-competition in October last year, and as per the words of Coach Dhaka, he has made good use of that exposure tour. Silver medallist at the 28th Sub-Junior National Boxing Championship Prayag Chauhan (60kg) is also expected to make a strong contention for a medal in the light weight division.
