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At 21, Hitesh Gulia stands on the podium with a gold medal, but he still remembers the day he first stepped into a boxing ring, simply to lose weight. “I went to the government stadium in my village (Jahangirpur) to get fitter, but coach Hitesh Deswal sir saw something in me and asked me to try boxing. From there, I never looked back,” he recalls, adding, “Uss time pe bas fit hona tha, wohi goal tha. But taking that one step towards health changed everything. When you decide to improve your lifestyle, you realise your own potential.”
Flashback to 2015 in a small village in Haryana's Jhajjar district: an 11-year-old Hitesh entering the ring while his father, a taxi driver, fought his own battles outside it. “My father used to fight in the main ring,” says the youngest of five siblings, adding, “He never made me realize what his struggle was. Even after working the whole day, he told me that you focused on boxing.”
Hitesh is now being hailed as Indian boxing’s next big name. He recently dominated the men’s 70kg category to clinch gold at the World Boxing Cup Finals in Greater Noida, his third international medal this year. In April, he became the first Indian to win a World Boxing Cup gold in Brazil (Stage 1), followed by a silver in Stage 2 in Astana. “Iss saal maine doosra gold jeeta, par iske peeche 10 saal ki mehnat hai,” he says. A key turning point came when he joined the Indian Navy as a sailor, gaining access to international-standard training. “As I keep achieving each one, the big dreams come closer,” he ends.
