Hospitalised Weeks Before Glasgow, Jaismine Lamboria Won Gold Anyway

On Saturday, 1 August 2026, Jaismine Lamboria beat Northern Ireland's Michaela Walsh 5-0 in the women's 57kg final at the Commonwealth Games. It was a unanimous decision, and it turned her Birmingham 2022 bronze into Glasgow gold. It was also India's second boxing gold of the day, coming hours after Preeti Pawar's win in the 54kg category.

Jaismine, who is pursuing her MBA at Amity University Online, is currently the World No. 1 in her weight category. Getting to this final took a lot more than good form. Weeks earlier, she was in a hospital bed, unsure if she'd even make it to Glasgow.

Boxing Runs in the Family

Jaismine was born on 30 August 2001 in Bhiwani, Haryana. The town is often called India's "Mini Cuba" for boxing, and for good reason. It has produced generations of champions; Jaismine's own family is among them.

Her great-grandfather, Hawa Singh, was a legendary heavyweight boxer. He won back-to-back Asian Games gold medals in 1966 and 1970, and co-founded the famous Bhiwani Boxing Club- the same club that later produced Olympic medallist Vijender Singh. Jaismine never saw him fight, but she grew up on family stories about him. "He was powerful, but there was also so much humility in him," she said. Jaismine's father worked as a home guard, and her mother has always been a homemaker. It was a modest household, not a wealthy one.

Her earliest inspiration came from her uncles, Sandeep Singh and Parvinder Singh, both national-level boxers. She started training under Sandeep in Bhiwani at 15. "I grew up watching them compete," she said. "They were the ones who got me started."

From Birmingham to a Paris Setback

Jaismine's first Commonwealth Games medal came at Birmingham in 2022, where she won bronze in the 60kg category. She beat New Zealand's Troy Garton in the quarterfinal, then lost a close semifinal 3-2 after her English opponent fought back hard in the second round. Later that year, she made history by becoming the first woman boxer inducted into the Indian Army, joining as a Recruit Havildar in the Corps of Military Police.

She competed at 60kg for close to three years before moving back down to her earlier weight class, 57kg, ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic cycle. It didn't go well at first. Her Olympic debut ended in the opening round, against the Philippines' Nesthy Petecio, a Tokyo silver medallist. The loss stung. But Jaismine has since called it an eye-opener- the moment that forced her to rebuild her preparation from the ground up, physically and mentally. It was also around this time that she began looking at further education, eventually settling on an MBA she could pursue through Amity University Online without stepping away from competition.

The Comeback That Made Her World No. 1

The rebuild worked fast. In 2025, Jaismine won gold at the World Boxing Cup in Astana, Kazakhstan. Months later, at the inaugural World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, she beat Poland's Julia Szeremeta- a Paris Olympic silver medallist- 4-1 in the final. It made her the first Indian to win gold at that tournament, and the ninth Indian boxer ever to hold a world title.

More followed: an Elite Women's National title, a Best Boxer award, a World Boxing Cup Final gold, and a silver medal at the 2026 Asian Boxing Championships. The Indian Army promoted her to Naib Subedar and awarded her the Sena Medal in January 2026. By June, she was ranked World No. 1 in her category.

It was a remarkable year by any measure, and she was building her MBA coursework at Amity University Online in the gaps between it- a routine that left almost nothing spare in her calendar.

A Hospital Bed, Then Glasgow Gold

Then came the scare. Weeks before the Commonwealth Games, Jaismine was hospitalised with a serious illness. It forced her to miss India's exposure camp in the Czech Republic in June, at the worst possible time- the 57kg category isn't part of the Asian Games program, so Glasgow was the biggest competition on her calendar all year.

The layoff took a toll. "I did have a lot of negative thoughts," she later admitted. She leaned on a sports psychologist to get through it. "I worked with the psychologist, and she kept me motivated," she said. She resumed training on 1 July, less than a month before the Games began. Her coaches told her to take it slow and not worry about results- just get fit and stay confident.

It worked. Jaismine beat England's Elise Glynn to reach the semifinal, then dismantled Lesotho's Rapelang Maselela so thoroughly that the referee stopped the contest in the second round. In the final against Walsh, she was patient rather than spectacular- edging a cautious first round 3-2, absorbing Walsh's attempts to draw her forward in the second, and closing out the third with the same composed, precise boxing that's defined her comeback all year. The scorecards read 5-0- Gold.

Conclusion

Jaismine has said she looks to MS Dhoni for inspiration on staying calm under pressure- "Captain Cool," as she puts it. It's not hard to see why that appeals to someone who went from a hospital bed to a Commonwealth Games final in under five weeks.

Her gold also added to what's already been a remarkable Games for Amity University Online's athlete-students, joining medals already won by Mirabai Chanu, Rishikanta Singh, Raja Muthupandi, Lovepreet Singh and Sakshi Chaudhary. Jaismine is continuing her MBA at Amity University Online through all of it- training camps, illness, recovery, and now a gold medal that took a great-grandfather's legacy, two uncles' coaching, an Olympic heartbreak and one very difficult June to finally arrive.

None of it happened quickly, and very little of it looked inevitable at the time. That's usually how the best comeback stories work.