July 29, 2021. A message popped up on Nikhat Zareen's phone: "Get ready for Paris, it's your time now."
Mary Kom had lost her bout at the Tokyo Olympics, effectively bringing down the curtains on her illustrious, history-making career. That paved the way for Nikhat, so long in her shadow.
Mary, an Olympic bronze medallist and six-time World champion, was India's most successful boxer ever, but in her final years, her dominance of the flyweight category had been challenged by the emerging boxer from Nizamabad. The norm at the time was that Mary would compete in all the major events without a trial and Nikhat, the second-best boxer in the weight category, fought in the second-string events.
Matters came to a head before the 2019 World Championships; the scheduled selection trials for the flyweight category were called off on the morning of the event to give Mary an automatic entry. Nikhat raised the issue with the Boxing Federation of India, which initially sided with Mary before later relenting.
Nikhat said all she wanted was a "fair chance"; Mary's response to this is now legendary: "Who is Nikhat Zareen?" Mary won the trial but Nikhat's message had exposed the sense of entitlement and insecurity that some sporting greats felt when faced with much younger opponents. Nikhat, then 23, had left the arena in tears but her time would come.
And it came on July 29, 2021. That would be Mary's last professional bout and the baton was passed on to Nikhat. A day after the Tokyo Olympics, Nikhat posted a picture on social media of a digital board counting down the time to the 2024 Olympics -- 1082 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes, 44 seconds. The caption? "The road to Paris begins. One aim: gold medal."
The road to @Paris2024 begins⏱
��One Aim-�� #MissionParis2024#Paris2024 #Olympics pic.twitter.com/3Iw3xdxDnw
- Nikhat Zareen (@nikhat_zareen) August 8, 2021
"I felt like my dream to compete in the Olympics had begun," Nikhat told ESPN in a conversation this week. "I thought it was the right time for my mind to be set on the Paris Olympics and that I had to start from that very day. I wanted this photo to be a reminder, so I pinned the post across my social media so that whenever I log in, it will serve as a reminder of where I want to be."
Today, 90 days before the Paris Olympics, Nikhat is a two-time world champion, Commonwealth champion and an Asian Games bronze medallist. She is India's most consistent boxer since 2022 -- she's lost exactly two bouts so far. But there is one thing missing in her locker, and it's the one thing that Mary has and she does not: An Olympic medal.
And that's her mission now: to be the first Indian woman boxer to win either Olympic gold or silver
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2022 was the year of change for Nikhat, the year she learned to believe in herself, perfect her craft and deliver the results that she was capable of. She beat Tokyo Olympics silver medallist Buse Naz Cakiroglu en route to the title at the Strandja Memorial, making her the first Indian boxer to win two medals at the event.
Then came the biggest event of the boxing calendar: the World Championships. Nikhat was so clinical that her scorecards at the World Championships read 5-0, 5-0, 5-0, 5-0; not a single judge, in any of her four bouts, awarded even a single round to her opponents. Nikhat, World Championship gold in hand, was on her way to creating her own identity.
There was a change in her boxing style, too; Nikhat was a lot more aggressive in the ring, but it was not blind aggression. It was "aggression with control -- that's the key" as former India coach Bhaskar Bhatt would say. She evolved from boxing on the back foot to leading with her front foot. Interestingly, it was a switch that he began work on in 2021 when she missed going to the Olympics.
There were lots of subtle changes, says John Warburton, who worked with Nikhat at the Inspire Institute of Sport. "She worked a lot on her attack, but now it was about how she attacked. She did a lot of preparation to punch...a lot of using her feet to prepare for punches -- getting into range, going out of range and back in and playing with her front foot. She also changed her line of attack. She did not just go in straight lines, not straight in and out. We made lots of subtle angle changes -- not big, subtle."
Those changes helped Nikhat to win gold at the Commonwealth Games, albeit in a lesser weight category, to make it three for three in 2022. She ended the year undefeated. She had answered Mary Kom's question emphatically.
Nikhat's confidence in the ring was also now matched by her persona off it; she was now a more familiar name with the Indian public, with multiple brand endorsements to her name and even a video with her favourite actor Salman Khan. She was now unquestionably the new poster girl of Indian boxing.
"When I was a youngster in the senior category, I was seen as a challenger to Mary. Now, they know me as someone who is an Olympic medal prospect. It feels nice [when I think about] main kaahan se kahaan aayi hoon (how far I have come)."
It's a well-known saying in sport that more important than winning, is following it up the next year. And so 2023 would be a crucial year for Nikhat -- could she build on her successes? The answer was again clear and emphatic: Nikhat did just that by winning her second World Championship gold medal. It had a special ring to it: She had watched the 2018 Worlds in New Delhi as a spectator and in 2023, Nikhat won the very competition with her family seated ringside.
What made this win all the more special was that it was in the 50 kg category -- an Olympic category. Unlike the 2022 World, Nikhat had to cut weight this time and that posed an additional challenge. Despite her being a World champion [in the 52kg category], Nikhat was unseeded and had to fight her way past six boxers -- the most among the 12 Indian boxers at the event -- to win her second Worlds gold medal.
It also proved a point: when the going gets tough, Nikhat just gets tougher. The weight cut or the unforgiving nature of the draw did not deter her, it fuelled her instead.
Nikhat's unbeaten streak was halted at the Asian Games, but it did not matter in the larger scheme of things -- she had qualified for the Paris Olympics a day before that, which was the prime target all along.
But that loss was important, feels Nikhat. It served as a reminder that she needed to be the best in the ring on any given day. "Had I not lost, my growth might have stagnated. Now I have to be more careful and focus more on my mistakes than my strengths. I'll need to work doubly hard on my mistakes because the Olympics come once in four years and I don't want to make silly mistakes there. The only aim now is to show my best game in Paris."
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And that's what took her to Turkey this year, where India's Olympics-bound boxers trained for a fortnight. It's not very common that you see two athletes, who will in all likelihood run into each other in their Olympic campaign, train with each other merely months before the biggest competition of their lives.
But Nikhat did just that, training alongside Cakiroglu in Turkey. "She is one of my biggest opponents, but we are really good friends," says Nikhat. The Turkish boxer was preparing for the European Championships, while Nikhat sparred with Turkish and Italian boxers ahead of the Elorda Cup.
That, most likely, will be Nikhat's last competition before the Paris Olympics. The countdown has truly begun, but the tension hasn't set in yet. "Honestly, I haven't felt the butterflies in my stomach yet because there's some time to go for Paris. After so many years, my dream of representing India at the Olympics is going to come true. I guess I'll feel the butterflies when I am finally in Paris."
"Swami Vivekananda has said, 'What you think, you become'. Why can't I think I will become a champion? It takes nothing to think that way" Nikhat Zareen
And to get there, Nikhat -- a firm believer in the powers of manifestation - has decorated one of the walls in her room with thoughts that radiate positivity. At the centre of it all is a note that says: "Paris 2024 Gold Medal -NZ".
"As soon as I get up and turn on my light, this is the first thing I see," she says. "That's how I start my day. I maintain a daily journal and do this countdown thing where every day I remind myself of what my dream is and what I want to achieve in life."
"Swami Vivekananda has said, 'What you think, you become'. Why can't I think I will become a champion? It takes nothing to think that way. I try to think positively that 'Nikhat, tu champion banegi, soch tu champion hai'. [You will become a champion, think you're a champion]. What you think, your body reacts to that and it also goes into your subconscious mind. For example: sometimes in the ring, I may throw a really good punch and everyone will ask me how I did it. You don't even know how it happened and I say "pata nahi bas nikal gaya" [It just happened]. It happens because of all those hours of training you have put in. Subconsciously it just clicks. Thinking positively helps become a better boxer daily," she says.
Having seen it all in the boxing ring and fought herself into the limelight, Nikhat has one final level to surpass. "So far Indian women boxers (Mary Kom and Lovlina Borgohain) have only won bronze. I want to change that - I want to bring a better-coloured medal back from Paris."