Indian Men’s Boxing High Performance coach Santiago Nieva confident of India boxers doing well at the Tokyo Olympics

Indian Boxers have been performing decently in the last couple of tournaments with Manish Kaushik bagging Gold at Boxam International while a lot of boxers claimed silver. These events prepare the boxers and also help them in assessment ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.

Indian men’s boxing team’s high-performance director Santiago Nieva also holds a similar opinion. He feels that the experience of playing in big tournaments like the Asian Games, Commonwealth Games etc will help the boxers in dealing with pressure in crunch situations.

Nien Boxers have qualified for the Tokyo Olympics which is a record for India. Barring two time Olympian Vikas Krishan, the Tokyo Olympics will be the debut event for Manish Kaushik, Amit Panghal, Asish Kumar and Satish Kumar and hence they will need these tips to handle the pressure.

But both Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik have won medals at world class events while Asish Kumar has also won silver at the Asian Championships. So they are not truly inexperienced and Neiva feels that this experience of playing some big events will help the boxers hold their nerves at the big stage in Tokyo.

“The Olympics is special, but our team is experienced – most of them have been at major events like the Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and the world championships,” Santiago Nieva told the Olympic Channel.

“Those events are not the Olympics but are similar. Even the Olympic qualifiers (in Jordan last year) were tense, I’d say even more so than the Olympics because if you fail, you are out. So, I’ll say they are pretty used to the pressure.

“Of course, we will have to see how we do when we actually get to Tokyo, but we take the pressure as something positive.”

Boxam International was a mixed bag experience for the Indian male boxers. While Manish Kaushik won the only Gold for India, Amit Panghal disappointingly bowed out of the quarterfinals. Asish Kumar was tested positive for COVID-19 as Satish also fell ill and was forced to hand a walkover. But Nieva is confident that the Indian boxers will do well at the Olympics despite the mixed results at Boxam.

“Amit is one of our biggest hopes for a gold medal. He lost a close bout, we expected more from him, sure but he has proven many times that he operates at a high level,” the Swedish coach added.

“We have to work on a few things but I’m confident he will be at his best in Tokyo.”