Tokyo Olympians – Uzbekistan’s first female Olympian in Japan will be Tursunoy Rakhimova

Tursunoy Rakhimova was born in the Tashkent region on June 5 in 1997 and following the grassroots program of female boxing in Uzbekistan, she started her career in 2012. She trains 21 hours in a week with coaches Mr. Kahor Umarov and Mr. Dilmurad Khasanov in the boxing club of Dinamo. Her favourite boxer is Uzbekistan’s former Olympian athlete Mr. Rufat Riskiyev and besides to boxing, she likes swimming.

Rakhimova won her first national title as a youth boxer in 2014 and competed at the Bekzat Sattarkhanov Youth Memorial Tournament in Kazakhstan a few months later where she bagged silver medal. She won her next youth national title in 2015 and in that year Rakhimova achieved the gold medal of the light flyweight (48kg) also at the annual Women’s Elite National Championships.

She proved strong developments at the Chinggis Khan Cup in Mongolia in 2016 where she defeated all of the Mongolian national team members. Short after that international event, Rakhimova claimed her second gold medal at the Elite National Championships and earned bronze at the Galym Zharylgapov Memorial Tournament in Kazakhstan where she lost to only two-time AIBA Women’s World Champion Nazym Kyzaibay in a close battle.

She received the right to compete at the Ho Chi Minh City 2017 ASBC Asian Women’s Boxing Championships where she reached the quarter-final. She won preliminary contests also at the New Delhi 2018 AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships and at the last Ulan-Ude 2019 edition. Rakhimova moved ahead in the world ranking and currently she loses from the top boxers but only by split decisions.

She defeated a South Korean rival in the Asian & Oceanian Olympic Boxing Qualifying Event in Amman, Jordan last March during the preliminaries. Rakhimova lost to Chinese Taipei’s AIBA Women’s World Champion Huang Hsiao Wen by split decision in the quarter-finals but in the specific Box-off she defeated Thailand’s Jutamas Jitpong and qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Personal biography
Name: Tursunoy Rakhimova
Country : Uzbekistan
Gender : Woman
Date of birth : 05/06/1997
Height : 167cm
Weight category : 51kg
Residence : Uzbekistan
Stance : Orthodox
Best achievements:
2020 – Asian & Oceanian Olympic Boxing Qualifying Event (Amman, JOR) – 5th place
2017 – ASBC Asian Women’s Boxing Championships (Ho Chi Minh City, VIE) – 5th place
2016 – Galym Zharylgapov Memorial Tournament (Karagandy, KAZ) – Bronze
2016 – Chinggis Khan Cup (Ulaanbaatar, MGL) – Gold
2015 – Bekzat Sattarkhanov Women’s Youth Memorial Tournament (Turkestan, KAZ) – Silver