NEW DELHI: Gymnast Dipa Karmakar used the occasion of Independence Day to vent her ire on the Sports Authority of India (SAI) over her exclusion from the Indian gymnastics contingent for the Hangzhou Asian Games, despite topping the selection trials held in Bhubaneswar on July 11 and 12.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Dipa – who was part of the long list of Indian athletes sent to the organisers of the Asian Games before the July 15 deadline but was later dropped for not fulfilling the sports ministry’s criteria – wrote that her non-selection left her demotivated and discouraged with the authorities maintaining a “deafening silence”.
“On this Independence Day, I am using my freedom of speech to discuss recent events that have proven to be very demotivating and discouraging. The Asian Games, an event I have eagerly anticipated for the past two years, looks further than it is," Dipa wrote.
"To my surprise, despite topping the national trials and meeting the ministry’s selection criteria, it appears that I will be deprived of the opportunity to participate in the Asian Games. Worse still, the reasons behind this decision are unknown to me and have not been communicated officially. Instead, my fellow gymnasts and I are left to read about our exclusion from the Games in the news and I simply do not know what to make of it,” she added.
However, during a recent meeting of Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) president Sudhir Mittal and GFI expert Deepak Kabra with SAI officials here, both had agreed that Dipa didn’t fulfil the selection criteria and her request to consider her name on compassionate grounds can’t be accepted.
The ministry’s criteria stated: “In individual events during the last 12 months prior to the commencement of the event (Asian Games), the performance of the sportspersons should not be less than the performance achieved by the eighth position holder of the 2018 Asian Games in measurable sports.”
Dipa had been struggling with injuries since 2019 and later faced a 21-month long doping suspension, which kept her out of competition in recent years.
