Tough task awaits Indians in World Artistic Gymnastics C’ships

Stuttgart (Germany), Oct 3:
Medal is too far-fetched a thought and Indian gymnasts, sans an injured Dipa Karmakar, will face an uphill task when they begin their campaign at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, here today.
The only Indian to have ever qualified for Olympics, Dipa, who had finished fourth in vault finals at the Rio Games, remains the country’s premier gymnast but she is out of the tournament after failing to recover from a nagging knee injury.
In Dipa’s absence, the onus will be on Pranati Nayak, Pranati Das and Aruna Budda Reddy to make an impact in the women’s category after they were selected in the six-member Indian team last month.
Pranati Nayak had won a bronze in vault event at the Senior Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Mongolia earlier this year, while Aruna had claimed bronze at 2018 Gymnastics World Cup.
But World Championships are a different ball game where even reaching the finals has proved to be a difficult task for Indian gymnasts in the past.
In the men’s section, the focus will be on 2010 Asian Games bronze medallist Ashish Kumar, while the team will also have Yogeshwar Singh and Aditya Singh Rana.
Olympic quotas will also be up for grabs with the top nine teams in each discipline (excluding the three already qualified from 2018) set to qualify for the Tokyo Games.
Individual Olympic berths will also be at stake as the top 12 male and top 20 female gymnasts, which will be decided by rankings in the all-around competitions, will qualify for Tokyo Games. (PTI)

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