🇮🇳 Mary Kom

She was born in 1982 in Kangathei, Churachandpur district, Manipur, the eldest of four children. Her father was a jhum-cultivation tenant farmer; the family survived on the maize and rice they could produce themselves. She walked an hour to school each way, did the household water-fetching and the field work, and saved her ambitions for athletics — first the 100m, then javelin, then in her final school year, boxing.

She enrolled at the Manipur State Boxing Academy in 2000 against her father's wishes — Tonpa Kom did not see boxing as a job for a daughter — and made the India camp the following year. The first World Championship medal came at Antalya in 2002, in the 48kg flyweight division. Her father called her after the medal ceremony. He has since become her loudest supporter in public.

The six World Championship gold medals — beginning at Scranton 2002 and culminating with New Delhi 2018 — make her one of the most decorated boxers of any gender in the history of the AIBA World Championships. The 2018 gold, won at age 35 after two children and four years of competition-management around motherhood, was widely framed as the greatest of the six.

Women's boxing entered the Olympic programme only in London 2012. She had to compete up two weight categories to make the field — the Games offered only three female divisions — and fought at 51kg. She won bronze, losing to Nicola Adams in the semi-final. India broke into national prime-time tears.

The Sanjay Leela Bhansali-Omung Kumar film Mary Kom in 2014 with Priyanka Chopra made her a national household name beyond the boxing audience. She was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the President in 2016 and served a six-year term as a Member of Parliament. Her advocacy work for North-East sportspeople and tribal-area development was the central theme of her tenure.

She runs the Mary Kom Regional Boxing Foundation in Langol, Manipur — a residential academy for boys and girls from across the North-East. The Indian government funds a portion; the rest she funds from her endorsement income.

She married Karung Onkholer (Onler) Kom in 2005 — a fellow Kom-tribe boy she had known since school — and the marriage produced sons including twins born in 2007 during the height of her competitive career. She returned to international competition only weeks after their birth. She does not, in interviews, dwell on this. 'I had two babies. I had to keep boxing. That is the whole story.'