Lovlina Borgohain is the boxer who put Assam on India’s Olympic map. Her welterweight bronze at Tokyo 2020 made her only the third Indian boxer to win an Olympic medal, and two years later she became world champion in a heavier division, the middleweight class that she had taken up when her old weight was dropped from the Olympic programme.
Name: Lovlina Borgohain | Born: 2 October 1997, Baromukhia, Golaghat district, Assam | Sport: Boxing | Event: Women's welterweight (69 kg) and middleweight (75 kg)
Twin sisters and a school trial
Lovlina grew up in Baromukhia, a village near Barpathar in Golaghat district. Her father, Tiken Borgohain, ran a small business, and her mother is Mamoni Borgohain. She is the youngest of three daughters, and it was her older twin sisters, Licha and Lima, who first took up kickboxing. Lovlina followed them into combat sport and practised Muay Thai before she ever boxed.
The change came through a Sports Authority of India trial held at Barpathar Girls High School. Coach Padum Chandra Bodo spotted her there, and from 2012 she trained at the SAI centre in Guwahati. She was tall for her weight and had a long reach, which suited a patient style built on the jab and on counter-punching.
Medals at welterweight
She made her mark at senior level in 2017 with bronze at the Asian Championships in Ho Chi Minh City. A year later she was picked for the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, where she lost in the quarter-finals to Sandy Ryan of England.
The 2018 World Championships were held in New Delhi, and Lovlina won bronze at 69 kg in front of a home crowd. She repeated the result in Ulan-Ude in 2019, beating Morocco’s Oumayma Bel Ahbib 5-0 before losing a close semi-final 3-2 to China’s Yang Liu. Two world medals in two years made her India’s main hope in the division.
The road to Tokyo
Her Olympic place was sealed at the Asia and Oceania qualifier in Amman in March 2020, where she beat Uzbekistan’s Maftunakhon Melieva 5-0 in the quarter-final. The pandemic then pushed the Games back a year, and in late 2020 she trained in Assisi, Italy, as part of her preparation. She added a further bronze at the 2021 Asian Championships in Dubai.
At Tokyo she beat Germany’s Nadine Apetz in her opening bout and then Chen Nien-chin of Chinese Taipei in the quarter-final on 30 July 2021, which guaranteed her a medal. In the semi-final she met Turkey’s Busenaz Sürmeneli, the reigning world champion, who went on to win gold. Lovlina took bronze.
She was the first woman athlete from Assam to compete at the Olympics, and the medal put her alongside Vijender Singh and Mary Kom as India’s only Olympic boxing medallists at that point. The Assam government awarded her Rs 1 crore, and there were further rewards from the central government and the BCCI.
A new weight and a world title
After Tokyo, the 69 kg division was removed from the women’s Olympic programme for Paris 2024, so Lovlina moved up to 75 kg. The transition was uneven at first. At the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham she went out in the quarter-finals, a result she later said did not matter to her as much as her bigger targets.
She had already shown that the new class suited her. At the 2022 Asian Championships in Amman she won gold at 75 kg. Then, at the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi, she won every bout and beat Australia’s Caitlin Parker in the final to become world champion. It was the medal she had been missing after two world bronzes.
Hangzhou silver and Paris
At the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, held in 2023, she reached the 75 kg final. She lost to China’s Li Qian, the Tokyo silver medallist in the division, but the silver medal secured her a second Olympic place.
In Paris she beat Norway’s Sunniva Hofstad in her first bout. The quarter-final brought Li Qian again, and the Chinese boxer won to end Lovlina’s campaign one win short of a second Olympic medal.
Away from the ring
Lovlina was appointed a deputy superintendent of police in the Assam Police in 2022. The same year she was elected chair of the International Boxing Association’s athletes’ committee. In 2025 she was named Assam’s sportsperson of the year with the Bhogeswar Baruah National Sports Award.
Career record and honours
- Olympic Games: bronze, Tokyo 2020 (69 kg); quarter-finalist, Paris 2024 (75 kg)
- World Championships: bronze 2018 New Delhi and 2019 Ulan-Ude (69 kg); gold 2023 New Delhi (75 kg)
- Asian Games: silver, Hangzhou 2022 (75 kg)
- Asian Championships: bronze 2017 and 2021 (69 kg); gold 2022 Amman (75 kg)
- Commonwealth Games: quarter-finalist 2018 and 2022
- Arjuna Award: 2020
- Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna: 2021
- Assam Saurabh: 2021
