4 min readAug 2, 2026 08:15 AM IST
It’s tough to find a subject for which there isn’t a tutor in the city of Kota, but Suresh Choudhary and his studious daughter managed to do the unimaginable: their search for a subject-matter expert failed, because Kota did not have a single boxing coach.
The daughter in question, Arundhati Choudhary, won gold in the women’s 70kg on Saturday at the SEC Centre in Glasgow, one of seven Indian boxers to win gold on a record-breaking day for India’s boxing programme at these Commonwealth Games.
“She used to enjoy playing all sports, but basketball was the one she used to play regularly. She was the captain of her school team. I used to try to convince her that there is no career in sports and to focus completely on studies. But when she was in 6th standard, we had a fight because she wanted to continue playing sport, and I felt that ‘Kota ka mahaul padhai ke liye bohot acha hai’ — Kota’s environment is very good for studies,” says Suresh. “All of India comes here to study. But she threw a tantrum and insisted she wanted to play sports.”
Suresh came around, on a compromise: she could play sport, but one where her individual excellence could shine rather than get lost in a team game. Basketball was out. Wrestling and shooting were discussed, but Suresh says his daughter’s eyes lit up when she realised boxing was an Olympic sport. A girl known for picking fights with kids at school, Arundhati had just found out that what she did in the schoolyard could become a profession. Finding a coach, though, stumped them both.
Eventually they landed at the doorstep of Ashok Gautam, a local instructor who taught martial arts like wushu and taekwondo. Gautam admitted he knew nothing about boxing. So he started watching Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson videos on YouTube, working through whatever instructional footage other coaches had uploaded, and relaying what he learned back to Arundhati. Kota had found itself another tutor, and a future boxing gold medallist.
Arundhati Choudhary celebrates after winning the women’s 70kg boxing final at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday. (AP Photo)
It wasn’t until Arundhati was 16, and reached the junior nationals despite barely any competition to prepare her in Kota, that her father realised boxing was serious. When she forced a referee to stop a contest against a boxer from Haryana, the state that has long dominated Indian contact sports, Suresh finally accepted that only one of his daughters was going to be the studious one, and it wasn’t going to be the one boxing.
Twenty-three now, Arundhati won this medal the way many athletes at these Games have: carrying an injury. “She has a plate near her wrist from an injury she suffered earlier. Her other wrist needs to be looked at as well, and she also has a linear fracture in her heel,” Suresh says. Surgery would have meant inactivity, and inactivity, in a competitive Indian boxing scene, risks losing your spot to someone else.
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That fear was real for years before it ever became a medal story. Arundhati spent a long stretch on the sidelines because she shared a weight class with Lovlina Borgohain, whose height and reach carried her to Olympic and Asian Games medals. Once Lovlina moved up to 75kg, Arundhati finally got her run in the team. There was a kind of vindication, then, in beating Rosie Eccles in the semi-final, the same Welsh boxer who had beaten Lovlina a weight class above at Birmingham in 2022.
In the final, it was another India-England contest, the two countries that have traded blows at the top of CWG boxing standings for years. Arundhati convinced all five judges, a unanimous decision over her English opponent, for gold.
