“People expect a lot from me,” says Olympic medalist boxer Lovlina Borgohain on her dip in performance after the Tokyo Olympics

Lovlina Borgohain is among the leading Indian boxing prodigies who are setting on the path paved by the boxing legend Mary Kom. Lovlina won the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics and forged her name in Indian sports history. But it is difficult to be consistent and at the best always hence Lovlina had a dip in form and she failed to win anything at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham as she was far from her best.

However she has now bounced back with a massive bang by winning the Gold medal at the Asian Elite Championship. Before she only had two bronze medals at this level and now with this feat.

However she reminisced how she was given a hero’s welcome back to India after the TokyoOlympics as she was only the third boxer to win an Olympic medal and also the only athlete from Assam to win an Olympic medal. She also played a huge role in building motorable road on her village and she was surely on cloud nine.

Often that kind of treatment makes things worse for the athlete as they feel that they are on the top of the world and their form can often drop due to lack of concentration from the sport. Exactly that happened with the 25-year-old pugilist had a poor World Championship outing this year followed by an untimely exit at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham meant that people came out bashing her and calling her out.

“Life has changed a lot since I won the Olympic medal. Back then, I was nobody. Today people know me and look up to me as a role model. Hence, they expect a lot more from me,” Lovlina said in a chat with The Bridge.

Lovlina shared how people are looking at her as role models and have a lot of expectation from her. So when she loses people are disappointed and she reasoned it how she would be sad aswell if her idol lost a bout.

“If my role model does not perform well, I would be disappointed too. It is the same case here. Since the Olympic medal, I had not been at my best and so naturally there was a lot of criticism and trolling,” she added on a lighter note.

The Olympic medallist acknowledged that her change in weight category affected her performance post the Olympic success. She made the switch to be in contention for the 2024 Paris Olympics. “The couple of tournaments I played after the Olympics was at a time when I was training keeping in mind the switch in weight category for the Paris Olympics,”

Lovlina won the Olympic bronze in the 69kg category but now she competes in 75kg category so putting up six kilograms in terms of category often gets very difficult. She explains how increasing weight category means that the body will undergo changes and will have to adapt. She shared how she was in the middle of two weight categories and not fully ready to be at her best and hence she failed to make a mark this year until the Asian Elite Championships.

“When you change your weight category, your body undergoes a lot of changes. I was somewhere caught in between the two weight divisions and it naturally affected my performance,” Lovlina concluded.