The Quiet Champion

Soft-spoken Jaismine Lamboria has turned family pedigree into India’s first featherweight world crown.

When Jaismine Lamboria climbed through the ropes in Liverpool earlier this month, she carried the weight of history on her slender shoulders. Her opponent in the women’s 57 kg final of the World Championships was no ordinary rival - Julia Szeremeta of Poland, an Olympic silver medallist. Yet Jaismine boxed with a steeliness that belied her reputation as a cautious counterpuncher. She dropped the first round narrowly, stormed back in the second with clean, aggressive combinations, and in the decider convinced four of the five judges. At 24, she had become India’s first-ever world champion in her division.

The triumph was more than personal. It crowned a dynasty. Jaismine hails from Bhiwani, a Haryana town that has become synonymous with Indian boxing. Her family is central to that story. Her great-grandfather, Captain Hawa Singh, remains the only Indian to win consecutive Asian Games golds and went on to found the Bhiwani Boxing Club, cradle of stars such as Vijender Singh and Akhil Kumar. Her uncles, Sandeep and Parvinder, were national champions. Their medals adorned the walls of her childhood home. But none, for all their glories, had ever scaled the pinnacle of a world title as Jaismine has done.

Her match was not a foregone conclusion. For all her natural gifts of precise counterpunching and solid technique, her career until recently had seemed defined by near-misses. She collected bronze medals at the 2021 Asian Championships and the 2022 Commonwealth Games but faltered at higher stages. At the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou she was knocked out in the quarter-finals. A year later, she scraped into the Paris Olympics not by direct qualification but by default: Parveen Hooda, India’s designated featherweight, was suspended for whereabouts failures, giving Jaismine her slot. She exited meekly in the opening round.

Her quiet temperament compounded the doubts. In a sport that rewards aggression, Jaismine was known for holding back. The world title in Liverpool, by contrast, was seized by her with a rare ferocity.

At the World Cup in Almaty in July, Jaismine displayed a new approach, overwhelming Pan American champion Jucielen Romeu to claim gold. She confided to her team that she was determined to go all the way at the Worlds. And when she did, she was praised by none other than Boris van der Vorst, president of World Boxing, for her footwork and movement.

For India, long searching for a successor to Vijender Singh’s Olympic bronze in 2008, Jaismine’s ascent is part of a broader pattern in which women are increasingly carrying the nation’s boxing fortunes. Mary Kom, the six-time world champion and Olympic bronze medallist, put India on the global map more than a decade ago. More recently, Nikhat Zareen captured world titles in 2022 and 2023, proving that Indian women could dominate in crowded weight divisions. Jaismine’s victory adds another strand: she is not only heir to Bhiwani’s male-dominated legacy but also the bridge between past icons and India’s next generation of female fighters.

The timing is propitious. Women’s boxing has gained stature since its Olympic debut in 2012, with featherweight among the most competitive categories: no fewer than seven Olympians entered the Liverpool draw. Jaismine’s win underscores India’s growing depth. It also reflects a wider transformation. In India, women athletes from rural towns are increasingly delivering on the biggest stages, whether in boxing, wrestling or weightlifting. Haryana, in particular, has turned into a conveyor belt of champions.

Yet for Jaismine, the Liverpool medal is not the finish line but a stepping stone. Upcoming competitions loom: the World Cup in Delhi this November, the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Games. With a title in an Olympic weight class, expectations will only mount.

By winning a world title, Jaismine has not only burnished her illustrious legacy but has subtly recast it. The Lamboria name, once shorthand for male champions, now belongs just as much to a young woman who refused to be overshadowed by her forebears. The paradox of Jaismine Lamboria is that a boxer so outwardly gentle has succeeded in one of sport’s most brutal arenas. She embodies the transformation of Indian boxing itself: from a gritty pursuit in Haryana’s dusty gyms to a global contest where women as well as men vie for the highest prizes. Her victory is also lesson that while pedigree may open doors, it is reinvention that wins titles.