New Delhi: For Parveen Hooda, the road back to the ring was far lonelier than any bout she has ever fought. The young boxer had spent nearly two years on the outside — suspended after three circumstances failures, grappling with the stigma, the self-doubt and the slow grind of proving she hadn’t given up on herself or her sport. On Thursday in Greater Noida, she finally stepped back into the light. With a gritty 3-2 split verdict over Japan’s Ayaka Taguchi, Parveen claimed the 60kg gold at the World Boxing Cup Finals, turning a period defined by silence and uncertainty into a statement of revival. “This gold means everything,” Parveen told TOI during an interaction. “For me, it’s not just about winning a tournament, it’s about proving to myself that I could come back after everything I went through. I wanted to show that I never stopped fighting, even when I wasn’t inside the ring.”The 25-year-old from Rurki village in Rohtak, Haryana, who had once proudly clinched bronze at the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou, found herself stripped of both her Asiad medal and the consequent 2024 Paris Olympics quota spot. Her world collapsed when the International Testing Agency (ITA) announced in May 2024 that she had committed three whereabouts failures between April 2022 and March 2023 — a violation under WADA’s (World Anti-Doping Agency) anti-doping rules. Her punishment: a 22-month suspension, later backdated to 14 months. Her loss: an Olympic dream she had fought to earn. “It broke me at first,” she said. “I won’t lie about that. When the ban was announced, I kept thinking — how did I let something like this happen? It felt like everything I had worked for was slipping away. For months, I struggled with guilt and frustration.” “It was my responsibility, and I should have managed it better,” she said. “I was traveling a lot for training, shifting bases, dealing with injuries… and somewhere the paperwork slipped. But in sport, there are no excuses. It taught me a harsh lesson,” she added. Cut off from competition and team environments, she retreated into what she calls “a tunnel of introspection”. The silence was deafening but eventually healing. “There were days I didn’t feel like training at all,” Parveen recalled. “But then I reminded myself — this is not how my story ends. I told myself that when I return, I have to return stronger, mentally and physically.” She turned the forced break into a period of rebuilding. Training became simpler, more disciplined. She worked on strength, mobility and endurance — things that didn’t need tournaments or camps. More importantly, she worked on her mindset. “I kept telling myself that I still belonged at the top,” she said. “Every session was like a message to myself that I wasn’t done.” Her comeback in Greater Noida, the first international event she entered since the 2023 Asian Games, was the culmination of that silent grind. Her route to the gold wasn’t easy either. In the semis, she beat Poland’s Aneta Rygielska, the 2025 World Championships silver-medallist, in what was arguably her sharpest performance of the week. “Just stepping back into an international arena felt emotional. I felt like I was home again,” Parveen said. “This medal is special because it represents everything I survived. The pressure, the doubt, the long months of not knowing when I would return.” And the return has truly been emphatic.
