To get there, she had to fight several personal bouts.
At 17, she left home to join a government-run sports training center in Imphal, the capital of her home state, Manipur, and begged the boxing coach to let her enter the ring.
“She was so small, I told her no,” the coach, L. Ibomcha Singh, said. Tears rolled down her face. The coach relented.
Kom kept boxing a secret from her family — until she won a state championship in 2000, and everyone, including her parents, discovered what she had been up to. Her father goaded her to give it up. Boxing is too dangerous, he told her. Members of her clan disapproved. The boys in her hometown ridiculed her. She held out.
“One day, I will show you who I am,” she recalled thinking.
One medal came after another, then marriage, then more pressure to give up fighting.
“My father told me, ‘OK, you leave it now. You’re married,’” she said. She resisted that too. Her husband, K. Onkholer, a former soccer player, stood by her.
Today, the two of them together run a makeshift sports academy out of their home, in part as a way to keep local children out of trouble. Manipur, nestled in the hills bordering Myanmar, is known for its network of drug runners and armed insurgents; children are drawn into both.
Kom’s greatest test came after the birth of her twin boys, in August 2007. For more than 18 months, she stayed out of the ring. Returning was tough on body and soul. Her back hurt. Her reflexes had slowed. It was hard to wean the boys off her breasts, harder still to leave them at home and go off to camp for a month at a time. She lost her first match, in September of last year.
She did not give up. She trained harder than ever before. Two months later, she was back in the ring for the women’s world championships in Ningbo City. She won her record fourth gold medal.
Fighting in the 2012 Olympics is her latest crucible. Weighing barely 46kg, Kom has fought in the pinweight category. To compete in the Olympics, she must be at least 48kg, the lowest of three weight slots established for women.
“I will pray to God to keep my body fit,” she said. “Because if my body is fit, I can do anything.”
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