World champion Jaismine Lamboria seeks Commonwealth gold in Glasgow

Jaismine Lamboria stands at the edge of something she has been building toward for years. The 24-year-old Indian boxer arrived in Glasgow with a single, uncomplicated goal: to trade the bronze medal she won at Birmingham 2022 for gold. She has the credentials. Last year was a breakout—world championship gold in Liverpool after defeating an Olympic silver medallist, victories at World Cup tournaments in Astana and Delhi, and a weight class switch from 60kg down to 57kg that proved exactly right. But credentials alone do not win medals. What Lamboria leans on, she says, is composure. She speaks of admiring MS Dhoni, the former Indian cricket captain known as "Captain Cool," and wanting to carry that same calm into the ring.

The path to Glasgow runs through a city in northern India that has become synonymous with boxing itself. Bhiwani, in Haryana state, earned the nickname "Mini Cuba" for the boxers it has produced. Lamboria was born there, into a family where boxing was not a hobby but a thread running through generations. Her great-grandfather, Hawa Singh, won Asian Games gold medals in 1966 and 1970 as a heavyweight and helped establish the Bhiwani Boxing Club, which later produced Olympic medallist Vijender Singh. But the stories Lamboria remembers hearing about Hawa were not primarily about medals. They were about his humility. Her uncles, Sandeep Singh and Parvinder Singh, were the ones who first put gloves on her hands. She was fourteen when she began boxing seriously, training first at an academy run by her great-grandfather's son before moving under her uncles' guidance.

Her parents—her father a home guard, her mother a homemaker—supported her entry into a sport that, in her immediate family, no other girl had pursued seriously. That support mattered. She grew up watching MC Mary Kom and Vijender Singh compete at the Olympics, later drawing inspiration from Indian Army boxers Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik, and from athletes across other sports: Neeraj Chopra in javelin, Michael Phelps in swimming, Milkha Singh in sprinting. The list was long because she was building a map of what excellence looked like.

Then came Paris 2024. Lamboria made her Olympic debut but lost in the first round to Nesthy Petecio of the Philippines, a Tokyo silver medallist. The defeat stung, but it arrived at a moment when Lamboria had only recently returned to the 57kg weight class after nearly three years at 60kg. The loss became, as she describes it, an eye-opener. It prompted changes—physical ones at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, where she now trains, and mental ones, working with a motivational coach and sports psychologist. The institutional support came from an unexpected quarter. After winning bronze at Birmingham, Lamboria became the first female boxer inducted into the Indian Army, joining the Corps of Military Police and training under its Mission Olympics Wing. It was an honour, she says, but also an opportunity to become a role model.

That role has taken on new weight. In early 2024, the Indian Army launched the Girls Sports Company to train girls aged twelve to sixteen in four Olympic sports, including boxing, creating a direct pathway to elite competition and army recruitment. Lamboria now sees younger female boxers coming through the system, one of whom has already won Asian Championships gold. She was the first, but she knows she will not be the last. The sport itself is shifting. Women's boxing was only introduced to the Commonwealth Games in 2014—just twelve years before Lamboria arrived in Glasgow. The male-dominated reputation of the sport still clings to it, but that is changing too, in part because athletes like her are competing on the world stage and winning.

When the national anthem played at the World Championships in Liverpool last year, Lamboria experienced something she wants to feel again in Glasgow. That moment—standing on a podium, hearing her country's music, knowing she had proven herself against the world's best—is what she has been training toward. The Commonwealth Games boxing competition begins on July 24, with finals scheduled for July 31 and August 1. Lamboria is one of India's strongest gold-medal prospects. She has the world title. She has the mental framework. She has the family history and the institutional support and the younger athletes watching to see what is possible. What she does not yet have is the gold medal from Glasgow. That is what the coming days will determine.