Dipa Karmakar's Olympic dream suffers a blow

Bengaluru, March 18: Indian ace gymnast Dipa Karmakar's hope of qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics suffered a severe blow after she aggravated her knee injury during the vault final at the recent Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Baku, forcing her to withdraw from this week's Doha World Cup.

The 25-year-old was looking to clinch the Tokyo Olympics 2020 berth with some good outings at the back-to-back Artistic Gymnastics World Cups in Baku (March 14-17 and Doha (March 20-23).

The Tripura girl had performed a higher-difficulty Handfront 540 vault in Baku, scoring 14.466 and 14.133 points in the two qualifying round for an average of 14.299 to qualify for the vault final at the third position.

But she was left crestfallen after aggravating a knee injury while landing during the first vault final.

Dipa Karmakar aggravates knee injury, pulls out of Doha World Cup https://t.co/9wDGFjznb5

— MSN India (@msnindia) March 17, 2019

Dipa had some problems in her knee before the final. She was feeling some pain yesterday but felt better after working with physio. She attempted the vault finals, but fell on her first vault, aggravating the injury due to undesired landing," Gymnastic Federation of India (GFI) vice president Riyaz Bhati was quoted as saying in PTI news agency.

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 at Mongolia from June 13-16, while the World Championship is slated from October 4-13 at Germany later this year.

Dipa has been troubled by her knee ever since she finished fourth at the 2016 Olympics. She had almost two years of injury lay-off after the Rio Games.

She had an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) surgery in Mumbai and had to skip the Asian Championships at Thailand in May last year.

However, returning to action in July, Dipa created history by becoming the first Indian gymnast to clinch a gold at a global event when she emerged triumphant at the FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Challenge Cup at Mersin, Turkey.

"Dipa can still qualify by doing well at World Championship this year," Bhati said.

Dipa had claimed the bronze at the vault event of the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Cottbus, Germany, in November last year to fuel her Olympic dream.

It was her first appearance after recovering from a knee strain, which had forced her to miss the vault final in the Jakarta Asian Games.

(With PTI inputs)