Who is Lovlina Borgohain? Know India’s champion boxer

With an Olympic bronze and gold medals at the world and Asian championships, Lovlina Borgohain has carried forward the legacy of women in Indian boxing that was founded by the legendary Mary Kom.

At Tokyo 2020, Lovlina Borgohain won bronze in the women’s welterweight category (69kg) to become the third Indian boxer with an Olympic medal, following in the footsteps of Mary Kom and Vijender Singh.

In 2023, Lovlina, 25, was crowned the world champion in the women’s middleweight (75kg) division. Mary Kom is the only other Indian boxer who has won an Olympic medal and a gold at the World Boxing Championships.

However, it took almost a decade of focused and unrelenting effort from Lovlina Borgohain to emerge from the streets of Assam and become a true champion of Indian boxing.

Where is Lovlina Borgohain from

Born on October 2, 1997, Lovlina came from a remote hamlet called Baromukhia in the Golaghat district of Assam. She battled several challenges in her early days, including poverty.

Inspired by her elder sisters Licha and Lima, Lovlina took up Muay Thai – a form of kickboxing – as a teen.

A fortunate encounter with Indian boxing coach Padum Boro during Sports Authority of India’s trials steered Lovlina Borgohain towards amateur boxing.

Lovlina began her boxing training at Netaji Subhas Regional Centre in Guwahati in 2012 at the age of 14. She was quick to repay Padum Boro’s faith in her by winning the junior national championship in 2012 and a silver at the 2013 Nation’s Women’s Junior Cup in Serbia.

Lovlina’s first major international medal came in the form of a bronze at the 2017 Asian Championships – a feat that got her selected in the Indian team for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.

She was ousted in the quarter-finals at Gold Coast 2018 but ended the year with a bronze medal in the welterweight division at the World Boxing Championships in New Delhi.

The pugilist from Assam went on to secure another bronze at the 2019 World Boxing Championships in Ulan-Ude, Russia, in the same category.

“I know the two world championships bronze are a good effort, but my aim is to win a gold at the international level. I realise I need to work even harder for that,” Lovlina Borgohain had said after her event in Russia.

The medals at the world championships helped Lovlina convince the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) to send her to the Asian qualifiers for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Lovlina defeated Uzbekistan’s Maftunakhon Melieva in the quarter-finals of the Asian Olympic qualifiers in March 2020 and won an Olympic quota for India in the welterweight category (69kg) by reaching the semi-finals.

Historic bronze medal at Tokyo 2020 Olympics

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics and the 2020 World Championships were postponed by a year due to COVID-19 but that did not dampen Lovlina Borgohain’s spirits. She put in the hard yards to make herself a medal contender and it all paid off at the grandest stage of them all.

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