Having seen his confidence bruised by several near-misses and a nagging back injury – one that Gaurav Bidhuri carried into the World Boxing Championships at Hamburg, the Indian boxer found a new lease of life by assuring India of their lone medal in the tournament.

Interestingly, the 24-year-old wasn’t even make the first cut. He sneaked his way through the final roster after a boxer from Bhutan relinquished his quota. It was not until late July which that he was handed a wildcard entry by the Asian Boxing Confederation.

Bidhuri could scarcely believe his luck when he came to know about the news. He told PTI: “When I got to know that I have got a wildcard entry, I went around confirming it with every coach, I kept asking ‘is this right?’ I asked each one of them.

“I asked everyone and only after each one of them said that I have made it, I finally eased up a bit.”

The Delhi-based boxer has never been among the top brass of Indian circuit, and has perhaps been culpable of not building on his starts, often exiting at the quarter-final stage.

The most recent one came at Tashkent in the Asian Championships, where he twice missed the chance to directly qualify for the World Championships.

Those missed opportunities would linger in the deep recesses of Bidhuri’s mind before squaring up against Tunisia’s Bilel Mhamedi too. “I have nearly always lost in the quarter-final stage of every tournament that I have competed in.

Here also, once I reached quarters, I was having these negative thoughts that ‘may be again the same thing will happen, I will lose, that I am not good enough’. But then another part of me was also telling me to break this jinx,” he said.

It’s all about controlling the mind

It was not until his round of 16 win over Ukraine’s Mykola Butsenko, a two-time European Championships silver-medallist and 2013 world championship bronze-winner, that made people sit up and take notice of him.

He won the bout with a decision, and it was seen as an upset of sorts. Despite picking up steady form over the last two years, it was overcoming his inner demons that was his biggest challenge.

He said: “It is the toughest part of being an athlete, to control the mind. I was having all kinds of thoughts. All of them were not negative but then not every thought was positive too. There was a lot of noise in my mind, something which only I could hear.”

The world No 21 is now on the threshold of becoming first Indian pugilist to better a bronze medal finish at the championships, should he go on to win his semi-final on Thursday.

On sacrifices and exceeding expectations

Bidhuri will fight his bantamweight (56kg) semi-final bout against American Duke Ragan. By advancing to the last-four stage, he joined Vijender Singh (2009), Vikas Krishan (2011) and Shiva Thapa (2015) in a select band of Indian boxers to have finished on the podium.

Going a step ahead of the aforementioned trio and progressing to the final would help him attain closure for an underachieving track record, which also includes a quarter-final exit from an Olympic qualifying event last year.

This, despite the fact that he had been in good form coming into the tournament. He had won a gold medal at an invitational event in Czech Republic in July, which largely went under the radar.

He is ready to fight pain as he would like to add a different colour to his medal. “I am suffering actually. I can’t sit for too long and can’t even sleep for too long. I have trouble walking as well but it’s all worth it now,” Bidhuri said.

India’s Swedish coach Santiago Nieva, perhaps, best summed up Bidhuri’s run: “He got a lucky break, he made it count. That’s luck, that’s life.