Gymnasts Ashish Kumar, Rakesh Patra and Dipa Karmakar bagged maximum medals at the three day 54th Senior National Artistic Gymnastics Championship which concluded at Ganpat Rai Indoor Stadium on Thursday. With this honour, the three gymnasts qualified for representing India at the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
The maximum gold medals in this entire tournament were bagged by Dipa Karmakar, the only female gymnast from Tripura. These include Floor Exercises, Balancing Beam, Table Vault and Individual All Around. Besides, the girl also won a silver medal in Uneven Parallel Bars.
Talking to The Pioneer on Wednesday, Dipa had said that she is totally focused on achieving a medal in the Commonwealth Games 2014.
Rakesh from Services Sports Control Board managed three gold and two silver medals while Ashish who represented Indian Railways got three gold medals with one silver medal and one bronze medal.
The final result summary notified by Gymnastics Federation of India clearly indicates that Dipa gave a tough competition to B Aruna Reddy and Pranati Nayak of Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal respectively. In the interview with The Pioneer, Dipa had said that she considers these girls as her competitors.
Official gymnastics sources maintained that meetings regarding finalizing the females and five males for CWG 2014 were held on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. “Since Dipa, Ashish and Rakesh are the best ones in this national meet which was the final selection platform for CWG, their entry in the Indian team is sure.
The list of remaining gymnasts for this CWG will be announced by Friday,” sources said.
The American Coach cum Selector for this CWG 2014 Jim Holt too hinted on the confirm selection of these three players.
In the Team Championship Indian Railways and Maharashtra secured the first positions separately in male and female categories.
This was for the first time that such a kind of sports meet was held in Jharkhand.