From extending the career of legendary champion MC Mary Kom to transforming Jaismine Lamboria into a world champion, Chhote Lal Yadav has built his coaching career on understanding what each boxer needs, an approach that has earned him the prestigious Dronacharya Award.

The 38-year-old Army man has largely been away from the spotlight, even as his boxers stepped into it.  Mary Kom’s resurgence, Jaismine’s world title and Commonwealth Games golds for Sakshi Chaudhary and Arundhati Choudhary are the defining milestones of a journey that began when injury forced Yadav from the ring to the coaching corner.

“I am very happy but I don’t have to stop here. I need to work harder. My aim is that my boxers win 2-3 gold medals at the LA Olympics,” Yadav said.

As a boxer, Yadav was part of the national setup from 2001 to 2012, progressing through the sub-junior, junior and senior levels. He competed in several international tournaments, won an Asian Championships gold and was the national champion for three successive years from 2008 to 2010 in the featherweight category. He joined the Army in 2005 after being brought to its Boys Sports Company in Pune from Varanasi in 2000.

But a back and spinal injury in 2012 ended his hopes of making the Olympics as a boxer. What followed was not an exit from boxing, but a change of role. His first serious brush with coaching came that year when he was asked to help Mary Kom for 15-20 days. The temporary assignment eventually became one of the most important coaching relationships of his career.

Yadav completed his coaching diploma from the National Institute of Sports, Patiala, in 2014 and by 2017 he was working with Mary Kom full-time. “She was a champion before I started training her. My biggest challenge was how to keep a celebrity and champion a champion,” he recalled.

Mary Kom was already a five-time world champion and Olympic medallist by then. Yadav’s task was not to teach her how to become a champion but to find ways to keep her one. He began experimenting with what he called “smart training”, tailoring her workload to her age and physical needs. “It was a challenge for me at that time, I was not sure if it would work, but it did.”

The partnership soon produced results. Mary Kom won the Asian Championships in 2018, followed by Commonwealth Games gold and another World Championships gold the same year. She also qualified for the Tokyo Olympics. The 2018 Asian Championships triumph remains one of Yadav’s favourite coaching moments. “Since the 2014 Asian Games gold Mary hadn’t won anything in a big tournament and hadn’t qualified for the Olympics also. So to win that made me very happy.”

It also underlined a philosophy that has since defined his coaching: there is no one-size-fits-all programme. “I make a personalised training programme for every boxer,” he said.

Yadav was part of the national camp as a coach from 2017 to 2022. In 2022, he moved away from the national camp to spearhead the Army’s women’s boxing programme. With the support of officers including Colonel Manoj Kumar and Colonel Mohan Roy, he began building a group of young boxers. Jaismine was the first recruit, followed by Sakshi and Arundhati. The results have been striking. Jaismine became a world champion last year, while Sakshi and Arundhati won Commonwealth Games golds earlier this month.