Dipa aggravates knee injury during vault final, to skip Doha World Cup
Baku (Azerbaijan), March 16
Dipa Karmakar’s hopes of qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics suffered a jolt after she aggravated her knee injury during the vault final at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup, forcing her to withdraw from next week’s Doha World Cup.
The 25-year-old from Agartala had performed a higher-difficulty Handfront 540 vault, scoring 14.466 and 14.133 points in the two qualifying rounds for an average of 14.299 to qualify for the vault final at the third position.
False landing
But she was left crestfallen after aggravating a knee injury while landing during the first attempt in the vault final.
“She had some problems in her knee before today’s final. She was feeling some pain yesterday but felt better after working with the physio. She fell on her first attempt, aggravating the injury due to an undesired landing,” Gymnastic Federation of India (GFI) vice-president Riyaz Bhati said. “She did not attempt the second vault due to the injury and finished her campaign at the Baku World Cup. She will now skip the World Cup in Doha and come back to India for rehabilitation and aim for the Asian and World Championships this year,” he added.
Qualifying system
The two World Cups are part of an eight-event qualifying system for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under which the gymnasts will make the cut based on their top-three scores.
The Asian Championship is scheduled to be held in Mongolia from June 13 to 16, while the World Championships is slated for October 4-13 in Germany later this year. “Dipa can still qualify by doing well at the World Championships this year,” Bhati said.
Dipa has been troubled by her knee injury ever since she finished fourth at the 2016 Olympics.
She had an Anterior Cruciate Ligament surgery in Mumbai and had to skip the Asian Championships in Thailand in May last year. — PTI
