India junior girls' coach demands longer camps with Central Asian boxers

India's junior girls' boxing coach Geeta Chanu advocated for month-long exposure camps with international pugilists for age-group boxers. She felt that would benefit them in the long run.

Chanu said exposure trips among central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are common and that play a pivotal role in grooming their young talent.

“Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have good endurance they are also high on strength but where they really score over others is their confidence,” Chanu was quoted as saying by the news agency PTI.

“Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan conduct combined training and competitions across various age groups, at least three such combined training or competitions in a year. Hence from a very young age they get a lot of international exposure. Our players face international boxers only in multi-national tournaments,” she added.

At the recently held 15-day REC Combined Multinational Training Camp for junior boys and girls at the Sports Authority of India’s National Boxing Academy in Rohtak, Indian pugilists trained with boxers from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan besides Sri Lanka.

Welcoming the Boxing Federation of India's (BFI) initiative, Chanu said, “We need even longer camps. A 30-day camp would yield more results. In 15 days not everything can be covered so we want that a longer camp should be there."

The recently held training camp saw participation of over 150 boxers including 75 from India, 37 from Kazakhstan, 18 from Uzbekistan and 35 from Sri Lanka.