5 min readApr 19, 2026 07:00 AM IST
Six out of ten Indian women boxers were in the finals of the recently concluded Asian Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, a feat that would be played up by most coaches. But Santiago Nieva wants everyone to stay level-headed over results.
“Every country is going to improve from here until the Los Angeles Olympics. We need to make sure we improve more than the others,” says Nieva, now well into his second stint coaching in India.
One of the best minds to have taken over the mantle of an already-strong women’s boxing programme, Nieva was India’s men’s high-performance director in his first stint with the country, left the Indian setup and joined the Australian boxing team after the Tokyo Olympics, and has now returned as the Indian women’s coach. In that first stint, the team was a mix of newcomers and Olympians. In this stint though, Nieva’s job may look simpler on paper – what with India’s women going through a golden period of medals at the Asian and World level – but to keep a good thing going and extracting the maximum results out of some of the older members of the team, keeps him wide awake.
“When I came to India in 2017, we didn’t have World or Olympic champions. We had experienced Olympians in Shiva Thapa and Vikas Krishnan. It’s a bit of a similar situation now in the women’s division with experienced boxers like Nikhat (Zareen) and Lovlina (Borgohain), who are with younger talents like Minakshi and Jaismine,” says Nieva.
Developing these boxers is key for the Argentine-born Swede. And part of the answer to the puzzle lies in using India’s resources to ensure boxers get as many opportunities internationally as possible.
Nieva takes the example of Kazakhstan and says, “They’re in every tournament, I’m looking now in the last two months, and every tournament, where there is an international tournament, there is a Kazakhstan team there. And I said in those times, if there is a Russian team and Kazakhstan team in the tournament, I want an Indian boxer to be there as well. I think not many countries have those possibilities that we have. And I think we can take advantage of that.”
Nieva also stressed that fitness is an aspect that Indian boxers will have to ramp up on.
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Nikhat and Lovlina may be two of India’s most experienced boxers, but the need of the hour will be for both of them to ramp up their fitness levels, especially considering the world class boxers in their categories. Nikhat, especially, found this out the hard way against Paris Olympics gold medallist Wu Yu. The two-time World Champion performed admirably in the first round, putting some intense pressure on the Chinese boxer. But Nieva feels that moving forwards, that will have to be her game plan to get a reversal of the decision against her nemesis.
“She needs to work on educated pressure. We gambled a little bit and said, ‘let’s start the pressure early on’. And it worked really well for about almost a full first round. The thing is to be able to maintain that, because the reality is that Wu came back in the second round,” said Nieva. “Next time we have to make sure we are ready to dominate all nine minutes.”
The same issue applies to Lovlina, who will have to build her fitness to go all out for three rounds against some of the tougher opponents of her weight class.
But where India’s senior boxers faltered at the Asian Championships, the younger ones started to show up. Take the case of Preeti Sai Pawar. The 54kg category in the women’s event is a minefield domestically, and internationally. In India itself, there lie at least four boxers who are good enough to make it to the national team on any given day. For Preeti to win a gold at the Asian level was a signal of intent.
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“She was probably in the strongest weight category. Beating the three-time World champion from Taipei was especially big because earlier she had beaten her at home, so there was home advantage there. But here she was clearly head and shoulders above not just her but the rest of the strong field,” said Nieva.
The next step for the women’s team lies a tough few months where they navigate the Commonwealth Games and then the all-important Asian Games.
Nieva believes that the team had a small peak at the Asian Championships but the bigger ones are yet to come. His confidence finally lets out a loud proclamation.
“I think we can confirm now that we have a world class level team, one of the absolute strongest in the world. We have confirmed it in the bouts, beating several world champions, beating Olympic medalists and many of the top boxers in the world. So yeah, it shows that we have a strong team that is on the right path.”
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
