Auto-rickshaw driver changes his three-decade daily habit to watch his daughter’s historic World Championship finals
The entire Rurki village will gather in front of a laptop, installed outside a boxing academy, to watch their pride in the 48 kg event of the World Boxing Championship in Liverpool on Sunday evening. Minakhshi Hooda, the 24-year-old, stunned two-time Asian bronze medalist Lutsaikhany Altensetseg of Mongolia to ensure her birth in the final before taking on Nazym Kzaibay of Kazakhstan in the final. Naturally, Minakshi’s most prestigious bout so far has changed her father Srikrishan Hooda’s daily routine, which has been the same for almost last two-and-a-half decades. Srikishan will be driving around the city of Rohtak in Haryana between 8:30am and 6pm, searching for passengers he can ferry in his auto-rickshaw. Sometimes he becomes late while returning home, but for the most part, this schedule is set in stone. But since Saturday, on the day of the semifinal match, his daughter won and reached the final, Srikrishan’s daily routine has changed. He dropped off his final passenger of the day by 4:00 PM. He then returned home, travelling almost 20 kilometers from Rohtak to watch her daughter’s bout. There’s no way Srikrishan is going to miss this bout. It’s a choice he’s glad he made, for he gets to see his daughter Minakshi win the most important bout of her career. Minakshi is the youngest of four siblings – two other sisters and one brother. None of them played sports, nor did anyone in their family. Sports came to Rurki fortuitously through self-taught coach Vijay Hooda, who started a boxing academy in 2013 primarily as a way to keep kids out of trouble. As she saw other girls go and train in the academy, in 2018, Minakshi too decided she would go. While she was keen, her father initially was against the idea. “I didn’t have anything against her boxing. But I didn’t think I could afford the cost of raising a sportsperson. I could barely afford the roof over our heads. I didn’t have land or a job. I didn’t even own my auto rickshaw but instead rented it out. How would I be able to afford a sports person’s specialized diet or her equipment?” Shrikrishan recalled. It was the coach Vijay Hooda who convinced Shrikrishan to let his daughter play. “At that time, I was trying to get as many children to join the academy as possible. But I also thought there was something special about Minakshi. She was tall for her age, but also much lighter than girls of her height. That’s the physical quality you want in a boxer. I told her father that I’d support her expenses as much as possible, but he needed to let her train. I even got some of her classmates who were training at the academy to convince her father,” he says.
First One-Million Pound transfer in women’s football! Arsenal’s move for Liverpool’s Olivia Smith set to create history
According to The Guardian, Arsenal have agreed to the first-ever £1 million transfer in women’s football after Liverpool approved a record-breaking offer for Canada forward Olivia Smith. The 20-year-old will thus become the first female player in history to touch the £1 million mark. The same feat was attained in men’s football in 1979 when Trevor Francis moved from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest. Sources claim that the amount agreed upon by Arsenal and the Reds is more than the 1.1 million US dollars Chelsea paid in January to recruit American centre-back Naomi Girma, who at the time established a new women’s world record. In her first season in the English game, Smith scored seven goals in 20 Women’s Super League games for the Reds, who placed seventh in the WSL last season. She was responsible for just under one-third of the team’s league goals during the season. The youthful forward, who is capable of playing both as a winger and central striker, joined the Reds from Portuguese club Sporting CP in July 2024 for a club-record fee estimated to be slightly over 200,000 Pounds. She is believed to have several years left on her contract, but the Gunners are willing to pay a substantial amount to acquire her services. According to reports, Liverpool first turned down many offers from other teams for Smith because they were judged unsatisfactory. However, thanks to the deal with the north London club, the Merseyside team will now get five times the amount they paid for Smith just a year ago.
Car rams into Liverpool’s victory parade celebration; Dozens injured
Witnesses described the “horrendous” moment when a car “rammed” into a crowd of people who were attending Liverpool FC’s victory parade following their Premier League win. Merseyside Police said several pedestrians were hit by the vehicle in Water Street, Liverpool just after the parade started in the evening on Monday. Dozens were injured two of them seriously, with 27 treated in hospital. A 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area was arrested, police said, adding that he is believed to have been the driver. One eyewitness, BBC reporter Matt Cole, said the car missed him and his family “by inches literraly”. “We had just moments before watched fireworks going off, the celebrations of the Liverpool bus passing us on the Strand,” he said. He said an ambulance had just made its way through the “dense” crowd he was part of on Water Street, when “there were screams ahead of us and suddenly this dark blue car just came through the crowd”. “It just wasn’t stopping – I managed to grab my daughter who was with me and jump out of the way. “It missed myself and my family by literally inches.” He said the ambulance acted like a “natural barrier that slowed the car down”, but that it had “no intention – it appeared – of stopping”. He added that the car looked to be travelling at “more than 20 mph”, but that he could not be sure it was not 30mph. “As it passed me, it was being chased by a group of men who were trying to bang on the side of it and throw things at it,” he explained, adding that the rear windshield had been “completely smashed in”.
