Gymnastics World Cup: Dipa eyes Olympic berth with good show
NEW DELHI: Gymnast Dipa Karmakar will aim to put behind the injury-marred disaster that was the Asian Games when she aims for a positive start to her Olympic qualification bid with the World Cup of artistic gymnastics in Cottbus, Germany from Thursday. The four-day showpiece is part of an eight-event qualifying system under which gymnasts make the cut based on aggregate of their top three scores.
The four-member Indian team, which also comprises B Aruna Reddy, Ashish Kumar and Rakesh Patra, will look to make it count with good performances.
Dipa, who finished fourth at the Rio Olympics, will be India’s best bet in the tournament after clinching gold at the Artistic Gymnastics World Challenge Cup at Mersin, Turkey in July this year. The 25-year-old from Tripura endured a poor comeback from injury in the Jakarta Asian Games where she had to pull out midway after her knee problem flared up again.
Aruna, on the other hand, won bronze in one of the earlier world cups this year in the women’s vault event in Melbourne and she too will fancy her chances.
Among the men, Ashish has been India’s brightest with a bronze in floor exercise at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou. He also won a bronze and silver at the 2010 CWG in floor exercise and vault, respectively.
Rakesh also had some decent performances this year, a fourthplace finish in the ring apparatus finals at the CWG being the highlight. He narrowly missed a medal at the Melbourne World Cup in February, finishing fourth.