At the Paris Olympics, Nikhat Zareen may very well live and die at the mid-range. While most boxers in India prefer to stay on the outside and then move in swiftly, unleash their punches and duck out, India’s best boxer in this Olympic cycle prefers to stay in the eye of the storm.
Zareen is simply brave in just where she starts to box. You’ll rarely see her too close to an opponent, or too far away for that matter. She’s always precise in how far away she is from her challenger. Literally an arm’s length away.
The distance employed by a boxer can often be the hallmarks of a great fighter. The mid-range is that twilight zone – right at the edges of a boxer’s range – where arms extend perfectly and connect devastatingly. Move slightly in, and you invite yourself for a barrage of shots with not much defence left. Move out and suddenly there’s no one at the end of the attacks. The mid-range is a counter puncher’s arena. The realm where they have enough time to see a shot coming, slide out and stick a blow of their own.
28 years and two World Championships old – Nikhat Zareen is arguably India’s best boxer going into the Paris Olympics. There is Lovlina Borgohain who has that increasingly long list of accolades but is sparsely tested in her new weight class. There is Amit Panghal who has the pedigree but has spent the last three years embargoed in a bitter battle against the coaching setup of India and will have to find elite fitness in a short period of time. There is Nishant Dev, who has age and confidence in droves but operates in a weight class inhabited by the greats.
A boxer of Zareen’s ilk is rare in India. She fights a technical bout and has the ability to conjure a clear-as-day punch – one that forces even the ficklest of boxing judges to award marks in her favour, when all goes to plan. But it’s the range that she employs that allows for her punches to look like they’ve landed – and usually they do. Going into the Olympics, she will be considered one of the best boxers in the 51 kg category. Two World Championship gold medals in this cycle paint a very large target on her back.