New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS): Santiago Nieva is already looking beyond India’s successful 2026 campaign, with the national women’s boxing team’s focus now firmly on securing Olympic quotas at the earliest opportunity ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
The Indian women boxers signed off from the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya with three medals, including two gold, following an impressive season that also saw the team return from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow with six medals, five of them gold.
Nieva, who is serving as the National Women’s Team Head Coach, wants India to make the most of the first available Olympic qualification opportunity 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.”
For Nieva, early qualification would be crucial in allowing the boxers to shift their attention towards long-term, Olympic-specific preparation rather than carrying the uncertainty of qualification into the final stages of the cycle. “Ideally, if we get to qualify next year early on, we get a good preparation time,” Nieva continued. “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.”
The results of 2026 have underlined the progress made by the women’s programme under Nieva, who previously served as High Performance Director of Indian Boxing from 2017 to 2021 before returning to the Indian boxing set-up in 2025.
He credited the team’s consistency this year to a sustained preparation programme that combined international exposure, domestic camps and high-quality sparring. The women’s team spent considerable time at the Sports Authority of India’s National Centre of Excellence in Patiala, where Nieva believes the depth of the support system has played an important role in their development.
“We have a staff of 40 people working with the boxers, around 20 coaches and another 20 support staff,” he said. “We have improvements in all areas, sports science, the boxing hall, the boxing equipment and so on.”
The strength of that ecosystem, according to Nieva, puts India in a strong position when compared with boxing programmes around the world. “I would say there are not many countries that have better support,” he said.
The preparation was also extended beyond the domestic set-up. India hosted teams from the Dominican Republic and Iran in Patiala for training before the squad travelled to Japan for its final phase of preparation ahead of the Asian Games.
“We had a good final preparation in Japan where we also got good sparring. We came very well prepared for the Asian Games. 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,” Nieva added to SAI Media.
With the Asian Games campaign now behind them, the challenge is to convert the momentum of 2026 into an effective Olympic build-up. For Nieva, that process begins with qualification, and the sooner India can secure its places in Los Angeles, the more time the team will have to prepare for the biggest target of the cycle.
