 One of the most successful athletes in the short history of women's amateur boxing is lining up to participate in her fifth women's world championships. Mária Kovács of Hungary already boasts two gold medals from the world championships and three from the European championships, to go with two silvers from each competition and she is hungry for more. On top of that, she has won seven Hungarian national championship gold medals in a row since 2001, all of them in the heavyweight division (86 kg). The 27-year-old champion from the Southern city of Szeged, has just conquered her eighth consecutive national gold - but this time in the 80 kg weight class.
Pic: Mària Kovàcs, light heavyweight, will lead the 7- athletes Hungarian team in the Women's WCHs
"At the end of last year, I had an ACL-operation, and during my convalescence period my bodyweight dropped from 84 to 77 to 78 kilos," explained Kovács, who is coached by László Gáll for the past four years. "I never had to hold a strict diet in order to meet the weight limit, so I decided to go down from the heavyweight to the light heavy. That is where I will try to win my third gold medal at the Ningbo City World Championships."
Kovacs suffered the serious injury, where she tore ligaments in her left knee, prior to the 2008 European Championships in Denmark but in spite of the setback she managed to reach the finals, where she suffered defeat at the hands of Russia's Elena Surkova 8-4.
However, this was not the first time Kovacs had to fight with a torn ACL . The summer of 2007, two months before the world championships in Podolsk (Russia), where she defended her world title of three years before in Antalya (Turkey), she tore ligaments in in her right knee. "My threshold for pain is quite high, so it is not a major problem to shrug off these kind of setbacks," she said. "We fight boys at practice as I don't have a true female opponent in Hungary, that could box a close bout with me. Men do not punch much harder than women, although they have a lot of self-confidence in the beginning. But when I first hit them pretty hard, they learn to respect women all of a sudden."
Respect has always been there as far as Kovács is concerned. She has been unbeaten for almost eight years in Hungary, which is an extraordinary accomplishment on one hand, but also describes the women's heavyweight's situation in Hungary, and in the world.
 Despite the lack of quality opposition, Kovács finds new inspiration in the fact that women's boxing is potentially on the verge of getting the green light towards the Olympic Games.
"Athough I will have turned 31 by the time of the 2012 London Games, I feel very young at 27, and I am more than sure that I can last at least four more years in the ring. For me the silver medal has never been an option, I will be fighting for the gold, come the 2012 Olympics. For me the greatest event is the Olympics, and that is the dream I have been pursuing since I was a child."
Pic: Kovàcs hopes to be part of the Olympic Games 2012: it would mean a dream come true |