Five months to go for the Paris Olympics and the race to book a spot in the 2024 edition is well and truly on for athletes across the world.
Also vying to make a cut for their second Olympics are Indian gymnasts Pranati Nayak and Dipa Karmakar who got their qualification campaigns going with strong performances at the FIG Apparatus World Cup 2024 in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday.
While 28-year-old Pranati finished an impressive third in the vault event in Cairo, with a score of 13.620, Dipa, 30, finished fifth at the first of the four FIG World Cup events, that are also Olympic qualifiers.
Tokyo Olympian Pranati also became only the third Indian woman to win a medal at a FIG World Cup with her bronze after she qualified for the vault final in seventh place with a score of 13.166.
Earlier in January, she had bagged two medals -- gold in vault and bronze in balance beam -- at the Senior Artistic Gymnastics National Championship 2024 held at the Gymnastics Centre in Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar.
What's Next?
While the rest of the gymnasts moved to Cottbus, Germany for the second of the FIG World Cups, Pranati and Dipa will not be competing in the European event. They're however confirmed to participate in the two final qualifiers - in Baku, Azerbaijan from the 7 to 10th of March, and then in Doha, Qatar from the 17 to 20th of April.
Speaking after winning the bronze medal in Cairo, she said: "I would like to thank everyone for their support. I'm happy with the performance, but I've got two more events, so just focusing on that."
The gold medal winner at these four Apparatus World Cups earns 30 points, a silver medallist gets 25 points and a bronze earns a gymnast 20 points, with points being awarded till the 16th position. At the end of the four events, the best three outings are taken into consideration and the final tally is formed, following which two gymnasts from each event are given a qualification spot in Paris, if they have not already previously qualified.
If Pranati manages to qualify for Paris 2024, she will become the first Indian gymnast to make the cut for back-to-back Olympic Games.
The qualification rules however do not work in Dipa Karmakar's favour as only one gymnast from each country can qualify through this route, per apparatus.
(With inputs from IANS)
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