Mary Kom

At 41 years old, Mary Kom has this physical status:

Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom (born 1 March 1983) is an Indian Olympic boxer and incumbent Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.

She is the only female to win six World Amateur Boxing titles, the first woman boxer to win a medal in each of the first seven World Championships, and the first boxer (male or female) to win eight World Championship titles.

Magnificent Mary is the only Indian woman boxer to have qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics, competing in the flyweight (51 kg) category and winning the bronze medal.

She had also been ranked No. 1 in the charts. Light Flyweight category in AIBA's Top Women's Rankings.

In 2014 in Incheon, South Korea, she became the first Indian woman boxer to win gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

She is also the first boxer to win Asian Amateur Boxing Champion for a record five times on April 26, 2016.

The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India's Ministry of Education and Sport, appointed Mary Kom and Akhil Kumar as national observers for boxing in Imphal on November 11, 2018.

At the function, the then Chief Minister of Manipur also announced that the stretch of road leading to the National Games village in Imphal West district, where Kom currently resides, would be branded MC Mary Kom Road.

Early life

In the Churachandpur district of rural Manipur, India, Kom was born in Kagathei village, Moirang Lamkhai. She came from a poor Kom family. Her parents, Mangte Tonpa Kompa Kom and Mangte Akham Kom, were migrant farmers who worked in jhum fields. Chungneijang was her name given by her parents. Kom grew up in humble circumstances, helping her parents with farm chores, attending school and learning athletics initially, then boxing later. In his younger years, Kom's father was an avid wrestler. She is the eldest of three children; she has a younger sister and a brother. She comes from a Christian Baptist family.

Kom attended the Loktak Christian Model High School in Moirang to her sixth grade and then attended St. Xavier Catholic School, Moirang, graduating to class 8. She had a great deal of interest in athletics, especially the javelin and 400 meters running. Dingko Singh, a fellow Manipuri, returned from the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games with a gold medal. Kom recalls that this had prompted several young people in Manipur to try boxing, and she had encouraged others to try boxing, and she had aspired her to try it.

Kom enrolled in class 8 after finishing class 8, but she was unable to pass the matriculation exam. She dropped out of school and gave her an examination from NIOS, Imphal, and Churachandpur College, not wanting to reappear for them.

Kombina participated in sports, including volleyball, football, and athletics, as a student. In 2000, it was Dingko Singh's triumph that led her to change from athletics to boxing. In Imphal, she began her training under the guidance of her first coach, K. Kosana Meitei. When she was 15, she decided to leave her hometown to attend the Imphal Sports Academy. Meitei remembered her as a hardworking girl with a strong will power who understood boxing quickly enough in an interview with the BBC. She then trained under Manipur's state boxing coach M. Narjit Singh at Khuman Lampak, who later taught her. Kom kept her interest in boxing a mystery from her father, herself an ex-wrestler, because he was worried that boxing would damage Kom's appearance and jeopardize her chances of dating. However, he learned of it after Kom's photo appeared in a newspaper after she won the state boxing championship in 2000. As she grew fond of boxing, her father began to support Kom's boxing aspirations.

Personal life

(Onler) Kom is married to Karung Onkholer, a footballer. Kom first met her husband in 2000 after her luggage was stolen while traveling by train to Bangalore. Onkholer, a law student at Delhi University, was in New Delhi on her way to the National Games in Punjab. Onkholer, the president of the North East students body, served as the representative of the Kompany and assisted with Kom. They became friends and then began dating each other. They were married in 2005 after four years, and that was the beginning of a new one.

They have three sons, twins born in 2007, and another son born in 2013. Merilyn was born in 2018 by Kom and her husband.

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Career

Kom took a break from boxing after her marriage. Kom started training again after giving birth to her first child. She captured a silver medal at the 2008 Asian Women's Boxing Championship in India and her fourth straight gold medal at the 2008 AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in China, followed by a gold medal at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games in Vietnam.

Kom in 2010 won the gold medal at the Asian Women's Boxing Championship in Kazakhstan, as well as in 2010 at the 2010 AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Barbados, winning her fifth gold at the championship. Since AIBA had stopped using the 46 kg class, she competed in Barbados in the 48 kg weight class. She competed in the 51 kg class at the 2010 Asian Games and received a bronze medal. She earned gold in the 48 kg class at the Asian Women's Cup in China in 2011.

She and Sanjay and Harshit Jain had the honor of carrying the Queen's Baton in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi on October 3, 2010. However, she did not participate in the Commonwealth Games because women's boxing was not included.

Since the world body decided to allow women's boxing in only three weight categories, excluding the lower weight classes, Kom, who had previously competed in the 46 and 48 kg classes, moved to the 51 kg category.

Kom was competing not only for the title but also for a spot in the 2012 London Olympics, the first time women's boxing had been recognized as an Olympic sport. Nicola Adams of the United Kingdom was disqualified in the 51 kg semi-finals, but she did win a bronze medal. She was the only Indian woman to qualify for a boxing competition, with Laishram Sarita Devi barely escaping a spot in the 60 kg class.

Kom was accompanied by her mother to London. Charles Atkinson, Kom's coach, was unable to attend the Olympic Village because he did not have an International Boxing Association (AIBA) 3 Star Certificate, which is mandatory for accreditation. On the way to the selection camp in Bangkok, Thailand, she had all her luggage and passport stolen. Kom defeated Karolina Michalczuk of Poland 19-14 in the third women's boxing match to be fought at the Olympics, with Kom defeating them 19–14. She defeated Maroua Rahali of Tunisia by a score of 15–6 on the quarter-finals the following day. On August 8, 2012, she met Nicola Adams of the United Kingdom in the semi-finals, losing by 6 points to 11. However, she came in third place in the competition and earned an Olympic bronze medal. In honor, the Manipur Government gave her Rs 50 lakhs and two acres of land in a cabinet meeting held on September 9, 2012.

Despite being keen on representing India at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Kom was unable to qualify for the competition. Kom has confirmed that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be her last appearance at the Summer Games.

In the Rio Olympics bronze medalist Ingrit Valencia competed against her in the Rio Olympics in the 2020 Summer Olympics. The commentator declared the winner on points by split decision as the game came to an end. A brief pause was followed by "in red," another short pause, but by this time, Mary Kom, in the blue corner, had raised her fist in celebration and did not follow the rest of the commentary regarding "Ingrit Valencia." "I had beat this child twice before." I couldn't believe that her hand was raised by the referee. In a interview, she said, "I swear it hadn't occurred to me that I lost."

Kom earned her first gold medal in the boxing at the 2014 Asian Games, held in Incheon, South Korea, by defeating Kazakhstan's Zhaina Shekerbekova in the flyweight (51 kg) summit clash on October 1st.

She earned her fifth gold medal (48 kg) at the Asian Boxing Confederation (ASBC) women's boxing championships held in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, on November 8, 2017.

The Commonwealth Games was the only major international event in which she had not placed a medal, as her category Light flyweight was not announced until the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Kom took the gold medal in the women's light flyweight 48 kg competition on April 14, 2018.

She became the first woman to win 6 World Championships in New Delhi, India, on November 24th, 2018.

Kom was selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October as a female representative of boxing's athlete ambassadors group for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Mary Kom won her 7th medal at the Asian Championships in May 2021, but she lost the women's 51kg final to Nazym Kazaibay on Sunday. Kom won her first medal at the tournament in 2003.

Kom lost in the Asian Boxing Olympic Qualifying rounds held in August 2021 to China's Chang Yuan in a semi-final.

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