Tracing golden girl Nikhat Zareen's journey from a sprint runner to boxing world champion

Nikhat Zareen, who was training to be a sprint runner, had once questioned her father. It was, perhaps, just a mere coincidence or destiny, but that moment would turn out to be life-defining for the newly-crowned flyweight world champion.

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Newly-crowned world champion boxer Nikhat Zareen is the toast of the nation after becoming just the fifth Indian female pugilist to win a gold medal at the World Championships. The 25 year old from Telengana registered a dominating 5-0 victory in the final on Thursday, defeating Thailand's Jitpong

It all started when Mohammad Jameel, a former footballer and cricketer, decided to take his daughters out to play one summer evening. "I told them we'll go and play in the ground so that they learn something. Someone went to play basketball, one played handball etc.," he told PTI. "After observing for a couple of days I saw Nikhat's body language and I knew she'd be a sport person. So, I bought a tracksuit and told her we'll go train tomorrow."

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday congratulated Nikhat Zareen on clinching gold at the 12th edition of the IBA Women's World Boxing Championships in Istanbul.

Jameel trained Nikhat for 100m and 200m and she had inherited her father's sporting genes. She was a natural and soon she was the district champion. Then one day boxing caught her fancy.

"Where I used to go to train with my father some Urban Games where going on. And I saw that all sports had girls except for boxing," Nikhat recalled hours after her gold medal winning