Good to see they've taken forward our work: Dingko Singh

NEW DELHI: Dingko Singh could not watch Devendro Singh's bout, telecast live late on Wednesday night. He was travelling to Bhiwani, where the Navy has set up a boxing camp. He did the Mary Kom one, though.
"It was always going to be tough," he says of the Indian woman boxer's loss to Nicola Adams in the semifinals. "Mary Kom's rival was bigger, with a longer reach. Marriage and age do not make it easy in a sport like boxing, but she is quite a champion.It takes a lot of courage for someone to move to a heavier weight category and still go this far," says Dingko.
For someone who is often considered the start-up point for the boxing revolution in India, Dingko is happy leading a fairly unremarkable existence today. A coach with the Navy, he's taken a set of 14 middleweight and heavyweight boxers to learn the ropes in Bhiwani.
He laughs when reminded of his unshakeable status in the Indian sport. When told how Devendro's aggression and attack-mindedness remind the old-timers of the once-fiery boxer, who forgotten at first went on to win a shock gold at the Bangkok Asian Games 14 years ago, he laughs louder. "It's great to see how they've taken forward what we started. It feels good that a sport in India has actually made such rapid progress," he says.
That 1998 December was to prove a watershed moment in Indian boxing. Mary Kom, the lone Indian boxing medallist from London, for one is eternally grateful. In the many comings and goings of a boxing bout at this highest level, the ever-gracious Mary Kom is quick to point out to the Dingko effect that shaped Indian boxing and in particular, hers.
Undecided between the ring and the much-safer option of the track, it was Dingko's pioneering exploits that forced her hand. For the rest too - Devendro, Suranjoy, Shiva Thapa and Nanao - it all begins with his impact on their impressionable selves.
Today, far from his fiery days - he apparently hit the bottle with a vengeance when he was first overlooked by Indian selectors for the Bangkok Asiad - it's a much tempered down Dingko that the world encounters today.
He is at peace with himself -- the many battles of the past, a thing of the past. "My aim now is to get at least two boxers from the Navy representing India at the next Olympics in Rio," he says, adding, "The Services are very poorly represented these days. I want to change that."
A proud Manipuri, how does he see the Bhiwani movement which seems to have overtaken the north-east even - so much so that even 'coach' Dingko chooses to train there? "Hmm..," he wonders, for a moment. "See, about the greater impact of Bhiwani, I see it this way. It's easier to get to Bhiwani than it is to get to Imphal and Ibomcha sir…." For a moment, that famous directness is back.
Somethings Dingko will never change. Thank god for that.