Reigning 57kg world champion Jaismine Lamboria throws punches for a living, but when it comes to handling pressure, the Indian boxer draws inspiration from one of her country’s most celebrated cricketing legends. “I really admire MS Dhoni’s mindset,” she says of the former India captain. “He is known as ‘Captain Cool’ for a reason, and I want to be calm like him.”
That composure could prove especially useful over the coming days. The 24-year-old is one of India’s strongest gold-medal prospects in boxing at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, hoping to improve on the bronze she won at Birmingham 2022. Fresh off a breakout 2025, in which she claimed World Cup golds in Astana and Delhi before becoming world champion in Liverpool, Lamboria arrives in Glasgow with a simple ambition. “I aim to change the colour of that medal to gold,” she says. “That’s what I’ve been training and preparing towards.”
At 5ft 8½in, Lamboria is tall by Indian boxing standards. Her Olympic debut in Paris ended in a first-round defeat to Tokyo silver medallist Nesthy Petecio of the Philippines, but the loss came in a weight class she had only recently returned to. After nearly three years at 60kg, she dropped back to 57kg during the Paris qualification campaign, a move that paid off when she won the world title by beating Paris Olympic silver medallist Julia Atena Szeremeta of Poland.
“That Paris 2024 Olympics exit was disappointing but it was an eye-opener,” she says. “It prompted several changes in me, physically and mentally. And a significant part of it has come about at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, which is where I train.” Lamboria credits her ASI coaches for building her physical strength, and a motivational coach and sports psychologist for sharpening her mental game.
An Army Pathway
The Indian Army has provided much of the institutional framework around her development. After her bronze at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Lamboria became the first female boxer inducted into the army, joining the Corps of Military Police. She now trains under its Mission Olympics Wing.
“It’s a great honour they wanted to begin with me, but I also see it as an opportunity to become a role model for female athletes,” she says of joining a system that has produced Olympians and Paralympians, including Olympic javelin champion Neeraj Chopra. In early 2024, the army launched the Girls Sports Company to train girls aged 12 to 16 in four Olympic sports, including boxing, opening a route to elite competition and army recruitment. “These girl athletes are doing very well too,” she says. “One boxer has already won Asian Championships gold, which makes me really happy. I may have been the first female boxer in the Indian Army, but I won’t be the last.”
Boxing in the Blood
Lamboria’s relationship with the sport, however, began long before the army entered her story. Born in the northern state of Haryana, she grew up in Bhiwani, a city so synonymous with Indian boxing that it is nicknamed the country’s “Mini Cuba.” Her great-grandfather, Hawa Singh, was one of the sport’s early giants in India. A heavyweight, he won successive Asian Games golds in 1966 and 1970 and helped establish the famed Bhiwani Boxing Club, which would later produce boxers including Olympic medallist Vijender Singh.
Even so, it is not his medals that feature most in the family stories she remembers. “He was powerful, but there was also so much humility in him,” she says. Her earliest boxing influences were her uncles, Sandeep Singh and Parvinder Singh. “I grew up watching them compete,” she says. “They were the ones who got me started.”
She began boxing seriously around the age of 14, training first at an academy run by Hawa’s son, Sanjay Sheoran, before continuing under her uncles. Though the sport ran through her extended family, Lamboria grew up in a household of modest means. Her father, Jaiveer, works as a home guard, while her mother, Joginder, is a homemaker. “Their support has been a big reason why I was the first girl in my immediate family to take up sport seriously,” she says, “not least as the youngest among the girls in the family.”
Inspiration and Legacy
Her role models extend well beyond her own family. Lamboria grew up idolising Olympic medallists MC Mary Kom and Vijender Singh, and later looked up to Indian Army boxers Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik, Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, American swimming great Michael Phelps, and Indian sprinting legend Milkha Singh. Closer to home, she credits senior Indian boxers Nikhat Zareen, Lovlina Borgohain, and Pooja Rani, not just for their medals but for the encouragement they give younger athletes. “When you look at them, you naturally feel that you want to do what they have done,” she says.
Now Lamboria is beginning to occupy that role herself. “For a long time, boxing has been seen as a male-dominated sport,” she says. “Being a woman boxer and an Army athlete, it means a lot to compete on the world stage, prove myself and inspire others through my performances.”
That shift is reflected in the Commonwealth Games as well. Boxing has featured since 1930, but women’s competition was only introduced in 2014. In Glasgow, bouts began on 24 July, with the finals on 31 July and 1 August. After her bronze in Birmingham four years ago, Lamboria hopes to leave Scotland with gold. “When you’re competing overseas and the national anthem plays, it’s a completely different feeling,” she says. “I experienced that at the World Championships in Liverpool last year. That’s the moment I want to recreate here.”
