Despite Rio high, gymnasts suffer
At the Rio Olympic Games last year, Dipa Karmakar’s fourth-spot finish in the vault event was expected to give a boost to the sport in the country.
A year on, wrangling between federation officials has harmed budding gymnasts. No national meet has been held in three years, a sign that gymnastics is back to square one.
India’s dismal show at the justconcluded 47th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Montreal is another pointer in this direction.
India’s best hope Pranati Nayak, ranked 68th in Montreal out of 96 in women’s individual qualification, scored 42.866 points. Aruna Reddy Budda finished 69th with 42.865 points.
The men’s team too finished way down in individual all-round qualification. Yogeshwar Singh got 73.365 points to finish 41st in a field of 59 while Siddarth Verma scored 69.497 points to end 53rd.
Since 2015, two factions of the Gymnastics Federation of India have been involved in a legal battle in the Punjab and Haryana High Court over recognition.
The in-fighting between officials started before the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Then, the Sports Authority of India (SAI) had constituted an ad-hoc panel with Gurdial Singh Bawa, a former chief coach, as head of the coaching staff.
NEW DELHI:
Samir Deb, a former nationallevel coach from Tripura, said in-fighting between officials has ruined gymnastics. Since there are no sub-junior and junior national meets, fresh talent is not being spotted, he said. “To select the national team, trials are conducted by SAI, but there is no opportunity at present.”
After missing the Montreal meet, Dipa Karmakar is focusing on the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.
After recovering from knee surgery, she has started training but gave Montreal a skip. “I have started training but don’t want to rush back to competition,” she told Hindustan Times.
In April, she injured the right knee and was advised surgery. Dipa said her target was a podium finish in the Commonwealth Games.
“The competition is six months away and I have time to polish my skills.”