Santiago Nieva, the Argentine head coach of India’s women’s boxing team, has set his sights on the next big target after a successful 2026 Asian Games campaign in which the women pugilists won three medals, including gold for Lovlina Borgohain and Parveen Hooda. The focus now shifts to securing as many Olympic quotas as possible at the earliest for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
The first major qualification opportunity will come at the 2027 World Championships in Kazakhstan. “The first qualifier will be in Kazakhstan, which is the World Championships, where ideally we get as many quotas there as possible,” Nieva told SAI media. “Later on, there will be the Asian Olympic Qualifier, and 2028 will have another two Olympic Qualifiers.”
The Asian Games medals capped a strong year for Nieva and the Indian women boxers, who had earlier produced an impressive showing at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, winning six medals, including five gold.
“Hopefully, if we qualify early next year, we will have a good amount of time to prepare,” Nieva said. “It will be a tough pathway, and hopefully we can qualify as many boxers as possible so we can form a strong team for the Olympics.”
Nieva, who served as high performance director of Indian boxing from 2017 to 2021, returned to the Indian boxing set-up in 2025 as head coach of the women’s national team. He credits much of the squad’s success this year to a year-long preparation programme built around strong international competition, domestic camps and quality sparring.
The women boxers trained extensively at the Sports Authority of India’s National Centre of Excellence in Patiala ahead of this year’s major international tournaments. Nieva highlighted the scale of the support available at the centre, where around 40 people work with the athletes, including 20 coaches and another 20 support staff.
“We have a staff of 40 people working with the boxers, around 20 coaches and another additional 20 support staff,” he said. “We have improvements in all areas – sports science, the boxing hall, the boxing equipment and so on.”
Nieva believes the set-up compares favourably with facilities in other countries. “I would say there are not many countries who have better support,” he said.
India also brought teams from the Dominican Republic and Iran to Patiala for training before travelling to Japan for the final phase of preparation, which provided further opportunities for high-quality sparring.
“We had a good final preparation in Japan where we also got good sparring. We came very well prepared for the Asian Games,” Nieva said. But he warned against complacency after the medal-winning campaign. “Having said that, we cannot rest on this. We have to continue looking forward, and in the end we all want great success at the next Olympics.”