As the 2026 Glasgow Commonwealth Games approaches, all eyes in Indian boxing are turning to 24-year-old Jaismine Lamboria, the reigning 57kg world champion who enters the tournament as one of the nation’s top gold medal prospects, hungry to upgrade the bronze medal she earned at the 2022 Birmingham Games.
For Lamboria, calm under pressure is the key to unlocking gold – a mindset she has intentionally cultivated by looking to one of India’s most beloved sporting legends, former cricket captain MS Dhoni. “He earned the nickname Captain Cool for a reason, and I strive to bring that same level-headed composure to every bout,” the soft-spoken athlete explained. This steely focus has already proven transformative: after a disappointing first-round exit at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Lamboria turned the setback into a catalyst for growth, reshaping both her physical conditioning and mental approach to the sport.
That Paris defeat came in the 57kg division, a weight class Lamboria had only recently returned to after nearly three years competing at 60kg. The move to drop back down ultimately paid massive dividends in 2025, a breakout year that saw her claim World Cup gold medals in Astana and Delhi before defeating Paris Olympic silver medallist Julia Atena Szeremeta of Poland to take the world championship title in Liverpool. Today, she trains full-time at the Indian Army’s Army Sports Institute in Pune, where she credits technical coaches for boosting her physical strength and a dedicated sports psychologist for sharpening her mental resilience.
Lamboria made history back in 2022, when she became the first female boxer inducted into the Indian Army, joining the Corps of Military Police. Now training under the Army’s elite Mission Olympics Wing, she sees her trailblazing role as more than an honor – it is a responsibility to lift up the next generation of female athletes. “It means the world to be the first, but I know I won’t be the last,” she said, pointing to the early success of the Army’s 2024 Girls Sports Company initiative, which already counts an Asian Championship gold medal-winning teenage boxer among its trainees. The program, which recruits girls aged 12 to 16 to train in four Olympic sports including boxing, creates a formal pathway to elite competition and future Army service – a framework Lamboria calls a game-changer for young women across India.
Boxing is in Lamboria’s blood, long before she joined the Army. Born in Haryana’s Bhiwani, a city nicknamed India’s “Mini Cuba” for its outsized contribution to the nation’s boxing talent, she comes from a family deeply rooted in the sport. Her great-grandfather, Hawa Singh, was a pioneer of Indian boxing, winning back-to-back Asian Games gold medals in 1966 and 1970 and co-founding the iconic Bhiwani Boxing Club that later produced Olympic medallist Vijender Singh. What Lamboria remembers most about her great-grandfather, however, is not his medal haul, but his quiet humility – a trait she carries with her today. She began training seriously at 14, first under her great-grandfather’s son Sanjay Sheoran, then under her uncles Sandeep and Parvinder Singh, who first introduced her to competitive boxing.
Growing up in a household of modest means – her father works as a home guard and her mother is a homemaker – Lamboria says her family’s unwavering support allowed her to become the first young woman in her immediate family to pursue sport professionally. Over the course of her career, she has drawn inspiration from a wide range of sporting icons: Olympic medallists MC Mary Kom and Vijender Singh, fellow Army boxers Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik, javelin Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, sprint legend Milkha Singh, and American swimming great Michael Phelps. She also counts senior Indian boxers Nikhat Zareen, Lovlina Borgohain and Pooja Rani as key mentors, crediting them for paving the way for younger female athletes.
Today, Lamboria is stepping into that mentor role herself, working to challenge long-held stereotypes that frame boxing as a male-dominated sport. Women’s boxing only made its Commonwealth Games debut in 2014, 84 years after the sport was added to the program, and Lamboria is eager to use her platform in Glasgow to inspire more young women to step into the ring. Her goal for the Games is simple: to stand on the top podium, hear the Indian national anthem play, and recreate the feeling she experienced when she won her world title in Liverpool last year. “That’s what I’ve trained every single day for,” she said. “That’s the moment I’m here to create.”