Lovlina Borgohain won her women’s welterweight quarterfinals at Tokyo 2020
“I knew she is going to do it,” an excited Tiken Borgohain, Lovlina’s father reacts, after the pugilist beat Chinese Taipei’s Nien Chin Chen in the women’s welterweight quarterfinal 4-1.
It’s a festive mood at their house since morning as they were expecting history to be created.
Lovlina’s father Tiken Borgohain revealed that it’s difficult to watch his daughter fight inside the ring. He was off the television set from 8.48 am while other family members glued to it watching their favourite Lovlina Borgohain scripting history, at Baromukhiya village in Golaghat district.
“I avoid watching her live. I can’t handle the pressure of when she is fighting,” says the senior Borgohain.
But he is super excited and confident that Lovlina would create history.
“She called us at around 5.30 am before she started her preparation for her bout. She told us that she was pretty confident. We again spoke after the match and she told us that she is coming with gold. I believe she can do it,” he adds.
“We are so happy. She was the girl for which Lovlina couldn’t proceed in several games earlier. But today, it’s a different story. She won back to back medals (bronze) at the world championships in 2018 and 2019.
But the real turning point in her life came in national sub-junior games that was held in Kolkata. She won gold there. After that she became really serious. Then I told her that you must qualify for the Olympics and aim for gold. She prepared for that well,” he reminisced.
Borgohain, a two-time world championship bronze medallist, displayed tremendous calm in the face of a plucky opponent, who had beaten her in the past. She was aggressive to start with, followed it up with a tremendous counter-attacking game, and kept her defence tight in the final three minutes to emerge triumphant.
Senior Borgohain also said that behind Lovlina’s success, there are years of hard work and dedication to the sport. She is struggler from day one.
“I supported her in whatever little way I could. From a very early age she used to wake up at 5 am and then I would take her to train with Prashanta Das.
“He started coaching her and then everything happened one after another,” said a proud father as the Borgohain family began to celebrate Lovlina’s achievement.
In the process, Lovlina becomes the first female athlete from Assam to represent the country in the Olympics and of course the first ever to win a medal. She is the third Indian boxer to win a medal in Olympics after Vijender Singh (2008) and MC Mary Kom (2012).
We believe India who have not won a single gold medal so far, will be awarded the first gold of the Tokyo Olympics and the first Olympic gold in Indian boxing as well as the second Olympic medal in the individual category to India. Lovlina will become the second Indian to win Olympic gold after Abhinav Bindra. At this moment, Our best wishes to Lovlina.
‘Coming with Gold’ Lovlina.
