Boxer Pooja Rani loses in quarterfinal to miss out on medal

Boxer Pooja Rani (75kg) missed out on a medal on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics on Saturday after dropping to China’s Li Qian 5-0 within the girls’s middleweight quarterfinal. Making her Olympics debut, the 30-year-old Pooja had defeated Algeria’s Ichrak Chaib 5-0 in her opening bout on Wednesday to enter the quarterfinals.

Solely three Indian boxers have gained an Olympic medal — Vijender Singh (males’s middleweight bronze, Beijing 2008) and MC Mary Kom (girls’s flyweight bronze, London 2012), and Lovlina Borgohain, who assured herself of a medal following her quarterfinal win within the girls’s welterweight division on Friday.

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Who’s Pooja Rani?

Hailing from Haryana’s Bhiwani District, thought of the cradle of boxing in India, Pooja Rani took up the game at 18, a ‘actually late’ age. She joined the Hawa Singh Boxing Academy, however stored it a secret from her father, fearing his disapproval. When her father came upon, he banned her from coaching.

It took numerous convincing from her coach Sanjay Kumar Sheoran earlier than Rani was allowed to compete. Sheoran did so as a result of Rani was a ‘full pure’ with ‘unbelievable energy’. Rani shortly started to return good on that expertise, saying herself on the nationwide stage earlier than successful silver on the 2012 Asian Boxing Championships. On the 2012 London Olympic qualifiers, she failed to arrange in opposition to her opposition, by her personal admission, and misplaced to American Claressa Shields, now a two-time Olympic gold medallist.

Rani bounced again to win extra medals, together with bronze on the 2014 Asian Video games and bronze on the 2015 Asian Championships. Nonetheless, she once more fell wanting Olympic qualification, this time for Rio 2016. Whereas celebrating Diwali throughout a break she took afterwards, a firecracker exploded in her left hand, burning it badly and placing her out of motion for a 12 months. Whereas ready for her hand to heal, she resumed coaching on her proper facet, however ended up hurting her proper shoulder, extending her hiatus by a further six months.