Kota Boxer Arundhati Chaudhary Heads to Glasgow 2026 at 70 kg

Arundhati Chaudhary will walk into the Scottish Event Campus boxing ring on July 24 as the first boxer Rajasthan has ever sent to a Commonwealth Games, and the first Glasgow 2026 athlete in any sport to come out of Kota. The 23-year-old, fighting in the women’s 70 kg class, was confirmed in India’s 14-strong squad after selection trials in Patiala this month.

Her route to the corner ran through a town better known for selling IIT entrance seats and through two wrist surgeries that pulled her off the international circuit for the better part of three years. The Asian Championship gold she carried out of Ulaanbaatar in April reset her status from comeback case to medal contender; the Boxing Federation of India (BFI, the national amateur boxing body) listed her in the senior team on May 16, and Glasgow opens its boxing draw just over nine weeks later.

From Kota’s Coaching Stalls to a Glasgow Corner

Kota sits in southeastern Rajasthan and trades on a single product: classroom coaching for the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE, the engineering admission test that filters more than a million school-leavers a year nationally). The town hosts roughly 150,000 coaching students a season, and the city brand is wrapped around that one pipeline.

Arundhati’s father, Suresh Chaudhary, runs the Kota District Boxing Association and chose the second product. By the time his daughter was in early secondary school, she was already winning regional bouts at the 60 kg amateur level. The family resisted the standard local script of cramming for engineering, the Olympics.com profile of the boxer recorded in 2021, and routed her into amateur boxing full-time at Kota’s Mahabali Sports Academy.

Coach Ashok Gautam, who has worked with her since the academy days, told ETV Bharat on Tuesday that her confirmation is the first Commonwealth Games slot ever held by a Kota athlete in any sport. Rajasthan has sent shooters, archers and a handful of athletics names to past CWG editions; nobody in a boxing vest under the state’s name had made the cut before.

That single line is doing heavier work than it sounds. Indian boxing’s strongholds are Haryana, Manipur, Punjab and Mizoram, and the seven boxing medals India brought home from Birmingham 2022 all went to boxers from those four states. Putting a Rajasthan name on a Glasgow draw sheet closes a regional gap the Boxing Federation of India’s roster page for the boxer has been pointing toward since her 2021 Youth Worlds title.

The Rajasthan Gap That Just Closed

India has sent boxers to every Commonwealth Games since the country resumed CWG participation, but the squad lists tour the same four or five states almost every cycle. Vijender Singh’s 75 kg medal at Delhi 2010, Mary Kom’s 51 kg gold at Glasgow 2014, Nikhat Zareen’s 50 kg gold at Birmingham 2022 all came out of Haryana or Manipur. Rajasthan turned up in shooting, race walks and archery; never in the ring.

Arundhati first broke through at the AIBA Youth World Championships in Kielce, Poland in 2021, becoming the first Rajasthan woman to take a boxing world title at any level. That medal came at 69 kg, the youth category equivalent of her current senior 70 kg slot. She had already been named Best Asian Junior Women Boxer in 2018 and won bronze at the ASBC Youth Asian Championship in Ulaanbaatar in 2019.

The state’s elite athletes have for years moved out of Rajasthan to train, with most boxers shifting to SAI Patiala or the Army Sports Institute in Pune. Arundhati’s last 18 months sit in Patiala, where the federation’s foreign coaching staff handles the senior women’s group; her Glasgow camp runs from the same address.

Two Surgeries, Three Years, Five Golds

The Asian Championship gold in April was not her first medal in this cycle but her fifth. Across the seven months from October 2025 to April 2026, she put together a return that nobody on India’s senior women’s list has matched.

The setback the run undid started at a Paris 2024 qualifier in Bangkok, where a wrist fracture cost her the bout and, eventually, two surgeries. By her own account to ETV Bharat, she sat out international competition for the better part of three years between her 2021 youth title and the start of 2025, an injury arc unusual for a boxer still under 25 in the senior class.

Her comeback medals into the federation’s CWG trial date:

• Gold at the World Boxing Cup Finals, Greater Noida, November 2025, 5-0 over Aziza Zokirova of Uzbekistan in the final
• Gold at the BOXAM Elite International, La Nucia, Spain, February 2026
• Gold at the Asian Boxing Championship, Ulaanbaatar, April 2026, 4-1 over Bakyt Seidish of Kazakhstan
• Promotion into the TOPS Core Group, the Sports Authority of India’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme tier reserved for top Olympic candidates, April 2026
• Selection trial win, BFI women’s 70 kg, Patiala, May 16, 2026

The Asian gold carries particular weight because the 70 kg women’s category does not appear on the Asian Games 2026 boxing card. The federation’s notice confirms she qualified via the trials route for Commonwealth Games alone, with no parallel Asian Games slot to defend through August and September.

Commonwealth Games are the stairs, Olympics is the pinnacle.

That was Arundhati’s reading of her own season, given to ETV Bharat after the Ulaanbaatar gold. Glasgow is now the second stair, and the LA 2028 cycle is the one she has flagged publicly as her real horizon.

Who Else India Is Sending to the SEC

India’s 14-strong Glasgow boxing squad runs seven women and seven men across the SEC Centre events list. Most carry an international medal from the last 18 months, and most also hold a parallel Asian Games slot; Arundhati and a small group of others are CWG-only entries.

The list was confirmed by the BFI after Patiala trials concluded on May 16 and is mirrored in the official Glasgow 2026 boxing squad announcement. Tokyo Olympic medallist Lovlina Borgohain anchors the women’s heavyweight slot at 75 kg; the Kota boxer fights one weight class below her.

Patiala, Then Europe, Then Ireland

Her pre-Glasgow calendar runs three countries and just over nine weeks.

• Late May 2026: departure from SAI Patiala with the senior women’s group for an international tournament in Europe, per coach Ashok Gautam’s Tuesday remarks
• End of June 2026: three-week training camp in Ireland with the rest of the India CWG boxing squad, the longest single block before the Games
• 23 July 2026: Glasgow 2026 opening ceremony, with boxing’s round of 32 starting at the SEC Centre the following morning

The federation’s foreign coaching staff has been the standout change in her preparation, several Indian women boxers have told media after their Ulaanbaatar medals. Arundhati herself said in April that the technical work at Patiala had reshaped her counter-punching at 70 kg, and BFI president Ajay Singh has flagged the women’s senior group as the federation’s deepest in a decade. The Glasgow camp will broadly mirror the lead-up the Indian men’s squad followed before Birmingham 2022.

Glasgow’s Boxing Card at the SEC

The boxing competition at Glasgow 2026 runs from July 24 to August 1 across 14 events, seven for women and seven for men, all inside the SEC Centre on the city’s River Clyde frontage. Round-of-32 and round-of-16 bouts run July 24 to 27; quarter-finals on July 28 and 29; semi-finals on July 31; and the seven gold medal bouts on Saturday, August 1.

The 70 kg women’s draw, according to the Glasgow 2026 day-by-day schedule, lands its gold medal bout in the August 1 evening session, the last evening of the Games before the closing ceremony. That puts a potential medal moment for the Kota boxer in the same broadcast window as the marquee final-day events.

Glasgow’s own boxing tradition runs deep enough that the city still remembers its olympians by name. The death of Scottish boxing legend Dick McTaggart at 89 framed local previews of the SEC card earlier this year, and host-city columnists have flagged the women’s middleweight class as one of the deeper draws on the women’s side. The countdown clock at Glasgow Central Station ticks under ten weeks to the opening ceremony as of Wednesday.

If she fights her way through the round of 16 on July 27, the full arc from Kota’s coaching alleys to the SEC Centre lands in one bout. If she does not, the Asian gold in Ulaanbaatar and the World Cup gold in Greater Noida stand as the markers of a comeback the BFI’s selectors saw before her first Glasgow draw arrived.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Arundhati Chaudhary’s first Glasgow 2026 bout take place?

Her first bout falls inside the women’s 70 kg round of 32 or round of 16 window, which runs at the SEC Centre between July 24 and July 27, 2026. Specific session times are published in the Glasgow 2026 day-by-day schedule closer to the event.

What weight class will she compete in at Glasgow?

Women’s 70 kg, sometimes called middleweight in older Olympic-era brackets. The 70 kg class is a Commonwealth Games event but is not on the Asian Games 2026 boxing programme, which is why she carries a CWG-only selection rather than a dual qualification.

Is she the first boxer from Rajasthan picked for a Commonwealth Games?

Yes. Her coach Ashok Gautam and the Boxing Federation of India have confirmed she is the first boxer from Rajasthan to represent India in boxing at a Commonwealth Games, and the first CWG athlete in any sport to come out of Kota.

How can Indian fans follow the Glasgow boxing draw?

Glasgow 2026 boxing runs July 24 to August 1, 2026 at the SEC Centre, Glasgow. Indian domestic broadcast and streaming rights had not been finalised at the time of writing; the BFI typically posts daily updates on its official channels through major Indian competitions.

What is the TOPS Core Group she was promoted into?

TOPS stands for Target Olympic Podium Scheme, a Sports Authority of India programme that funds and supports the country’s highest-priority Olympic medal contenders. Promotion to the Core Group means heavier funding, foreign training stints, and access to senior coaches.