GOOD SPORTS: Punching Her Way to Glory
As the Summer Games in London approach, so does a great opportunity for 29-year-old MC Mary Kom to win a medal in women’s boxing, which has been added to the Olympics for the first time. The five time world boxing champion, who had to move up from her usual 48 kg to the 51-kg category to compete in the Olympics, is spending a month training under British coach Charles Atkinson. “Indian boxers have a tendency of getting dehydrated in the ring,” Atkinson told the Times of India. “We don’t want that to happen to Mary. Hence we have done away with her old drills. She is working out of her comfort zone now.”
Winning any kind of medal would cement her status as a sporting legend in India. The Manipur native, who grew up in a farming-dependent family, has had to overcome many hurdles to succeed in a male-dominated sport. “There are so many rules in society about what a woman can or cannot do,” she told IBN Live. “Boxing is not considered respectable for women and nobody believed I could be a boxing champion, not even my friends. Our neighbors said all kinds of things. I wanted to show that not just men, but even women can do anything they want.”
Some men might disagree with her, but not many would do it to her face.
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? Please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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