Amit Panghal is no rookie, but out of national reckoning for a major part of the current Olympic cycle, the star boxer had literally one chance to answer his critics and remain relevant in India’s boxing scene. He grabbed that opportunity with both hands by qualifying for the Paris Olympics to punch his way back into the scene.
Amits chance finally arrived once Irish High Performance director Bernard Dunne resigned after none of the male boxers (selected on the basis of the evaluation method that he devised) failed to qualify for the Games with less than two months to go for the Olympics.’
Interestingly, it was upon Dunne’s arrival that Panghal’s dominance as India’s first choice pick in the 51kg category, started diminishing even after the latter returned with a gold from the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. In fact, the Rohtak boxer’s chances to compete in two World Championships and the Hangzhou Asian Games, all in this Olympic cycle, went out of the window after he was found to be the next best based on Dunne’s evaluation method, one that India adopted after doing away with the traditional trial system.
However, once Dunne left, the same system that adjudged that Panghal’s successor Deepak Bhoria was ahead of him, for selection to marquee events, placed him on top in the national camp in March with 247 points. Bhoria was next with 239 points, followed by Anshul Punia (119).
And after Bhoria lost early in the first Boxing World Qualifier in Italy, the BFI had no options but to put their money on the 2019 World Championships silver medallist to grab a quota from the second and final Boxing World Qualifier held in Bangkok earlier this month. Panghal repaid the faith with a hard-fought 5-0 UD win China’s Chuang Liu for a ticket to his second Games.
Following his comeback to the national setup, Amit is determined to make amends for his failure in Tokyo. Three years back, Panghal went to Tokyo as the No.1 seed, and certainly as one of the firm favourites for a podium finish but after failing to live up to those expectations, Panghal wants to make it count in Paris.
The shock of crashing out of the Tokyo Olympics without a medal was followed by a period of struggle and resultant depression during which he fell out of favour with the then national coach and spent a couple of years out of the Indian squad.
Unlike Tokyo, Panghal will head into the Paris Olympics as a much lower ranked boxer. According to the Indian Army JCO, this means much lower pressure of expectations which will help him to perform more freely.
“I will be a lot more relaxed compared to Tokyo. I have a lot of international experience after playing in big tournaments such as the Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games. I know the boxing styles of all my major opponents and how to tackle them. The ones I do not know yet, I am preparing for them as well,” he asserted.
“I like to learn from my mistakes in the last Olympics and the qualifiers. I would like to improve my stamina and iron out some of the technical faults in combination punches. My endurance is a bit weak. I am experiencing problems with my stamina after cutting down on my weight for competition. As a result, I feel tired during the third round,” he pointed out.
“Also, currently I use one-two punches during combination punching. I am trying to increase that to 3-4 punches,” he said.
India’s men boxers have struggled to qualify for Paris with only two among the men – Nishant Dev and Amit – managing to book their tickets to the quadrennial extravaganza in the French capital.
Panghal however, insisted that the Indian boxers had adequate preparation and were unlucky during closely fought bouts during the Olympic qualifiers.
“Training was good. Some of the bouts were extremely close calls and could have gone either way. It was hard luck that we were unable to win those bouts and secure more quotas,” the 28-year-old said.
“We had good training sessions and excellent foreign training stints. We lost out in close bouts,” he added.
Unlike many other Indian athletes preparing for Olympics 2024, Panghal does not want to train abroad but instead prefers high altitude training in India. The reason behind his food preferences.
“I face a lot of problems with my diet during competition or training stints abroad. I do not need a
lot of food but my diet must be proper and adequate,” the 2018 Asian Games gold medalist said.
“I faced a lot of diet related problems during the last Olympics as I was sparring with boxers who had already qualified but I did not get proper food in Tokyo. I want to avoid those issues during the Paris Olympics and that is why I want to train in India,” he added.