NEW DELHI: Gymnast Dipa Karmakar won't travel to Hangzhou for the upcoming Asian Games. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) on Friday rejected her request for inclusion in the final list of Indian athletes in individual events for the continental multisport event, TOI can confirm.
Not just Dipa, the entire men's gymnastics team has been dropped after failing to fulfil the sports ministry's eligibility criteria. Out of the nine-member gymnastics contingent originally selected for the Asiad, Pranati Nayak will be the country's lone entry in the women's artistic event.
All nine names were part of the long list of athletes which was shared with the organisers of the Asiad on July 15.
In the men's section, all five gymnasts – Yogeshwar Singh, Rakesh Patra, Tapan Mohanty, Gaurav Kumar and Satyajit Mondal – were dropped. In the women's division, apart from Dipa, Pranati Das and Protistha Samanta weren't considered for final selection.
At the meeting held on Friday at the SAI headquarters here, attended by Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) president Sudhir Mittal and GFI expert Deepak Kabra, it was decided that only Nayak's name will be considered for selection as others failed to achieve desired scores during the recently-held qualifiers.
While GFI was satisfied with the decision in respect of women gymnasts, there were several observations made by the federation for the men's team's selection to the SAI officials.
The original proposal of the GFI for the men's artistic team consisted of five gymnasts, out of which they contested for four of them. For Rakesh, the GFI argued that he deserved selection for the Asiad since his scores on parallel bars were 13.200 as against 12.875, on pommel horse 12.066 as against 10.875 and on horizontal bars 12.666 against 11.200 to achieve eighth-rank when compared with the Jakarta Asiad finals in 2018.
The same arguments were offered for the selection of Yogeshwar and Gaurav. However, in the case of Satyajit, the federation agreed that he got injured during the selection trials and needed time to recover.
The SAI officials argued during the meeting that none except Nayak deserved selection. “It was explained to the GFI that as per the competition norms (followed across the world including GFI for domestic competitions), each gymnast has to first participate in the qualification (preliminary) round and, based on their performance, they qualify for the next round. Therefore, all these three men gymnasts – Rakesh, Yogeshwar and Gaurav – did achieve this score in the qualification round but didn't even qualify for the finals of the tournament which consisted of eight finalists,” the official said.
"It was also explained that the preliminary round scores cannot become a basis for selection. To be among the top-8, an athlete has to move through the qualification round to be in the top-eight. The scores of top-eight in the final round may decrease as the performance in this round is only tactical. In the finals, only the ranking matters and not scoring. Therefore, all three gymnasts didn't qualify for the Asian Games," the official added.
In the case of Dipa, the federation acknowledged that she didn't fulfil the selection criteria and her request to consider her name on compassionate grounds can't be accepted. Dipa has been away from gymnastics since 2019 because of injuries and then 21-month long doping suspension. She topped the trials held in Bhubaneswar on July 11-12, achieving the first place in the women's artistic event. But that didn't form the basis for her selection for the Asiad.
It's been learnt that no gymnast qualified for the rhythmic and trampoline disciplines for the multisport event.