Carrying her lucky charm baby doll, Esmeralda Falcon hopes to put Mexican women boxing on Paris Olympics centrestage
Boxing News: What started as a fun sport for Mexican Esmeralda Falcon has become a passion for her life. Falcon, a lightweight category boxer, has a distinct prese Esmeralda Falcon, a lightweight category boxer from Mexico, is aiming to become the first-ever female female boxer to qualify for the Olympics at Tokyo 2020. She has been carrying a lifelike baby doll at the Women's World Championships and is carrying it with her coaches seated at the ringside. Falcon has been a shining light for women boxing in her home country, especially after her qualification for Tokyo. She had been part of the national boxing set-up since 2014, but never got the chance to represent Mexico at the Summer Games until 2018, when her title win in the women’s 60kg category at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia changed her life for good. She now wants to make history in boxing for Mexico and is determined to become an Olympic medallist just like Misael Rodríguez.
Published : 3 months ago by Sabi Hussain in Sports
NEW DELHI: What started as a fun sport for Mexican Esmeralda Falcon has become a passion for her life. Falcon, a lightweight category boxer, has a distinct presence at the women’s World Championships here.The Pan American Games medallist, who had created history after becoming the first-ever female boxer from Mexico to qualify for the Olympics at Tokyo 2020, has been carrying a lifelike baby doll at the Worlds, inseparable even during her bouts in the 60kg category when she hands it over to her coaches seated at the ringside.“This doll is very important to me because it’s my lucky charm. Someone dear to me who passed away gave it to me as a gift and I’ll preserve it for my whole life,” Falcon told TOI.Probed further, she revealed: “She was like a grandma to me and this was her gift to me. She died when I was young and she was the only person in my family who supported me in boxing . I have been carrying this doll for 13 years.”Falcon said like many other families back in Mexico City, her family didn’t approve of boxing. “Grandma was the only person who supported and encouraged me to be in the sport. She was the only woman who gave me the security to be in boxing. My family members told me this sport is for men, but I refused to give up on my dreams. When I had qualified for the Olympics and had gone to Tokyo as part of the Mexican Olympic team, I had taken the doll with me as a spiritual guide.”Falcon has been a shining light for women boxing in her home country, especially after her qualification for Tokyo. She had been part of the national boxing set-up since 2014, but never got the chance to represent Mexico at the Summer Games until 2018, when her title win in the women’s 60kg category at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia changed her life for good.“In Paris, I want to make history in boxing for Mexico. I want to be an Olympic medallist just like Misael Rodríguez. That’s a dream.” Rodríguez became a national hero after securing a bronze medal for Mexico at the Rio Games in 2016.Falcon informed that as a kid, her architect father used to show his children Bruce Lee movies after returning from school at their native home in Santiago Tulyehualco, a town in Southern Mexico City. She liked Lee’s action movies and dreamt of becoming a fighter like him. She primarily enrolled herself in Chinese martial arts classes, but switched to boxing on the insistence of her Grandma. Since then, the sport has stayed with her.Here at the New Delhi Worlds, Falcon participated in the lightweight category but lost to South Korean Yeonji Oh by a unanimous decision in the first round. This was her comeback tournament after contracting Covid-19 along with her six family members in September 2020, leading to her hospitalisation for a few days.
Topics: Olympics, India