Gymnastics: Pranati Nayak wins bronze in vault at Apparatus World Cup in Cairo; Dipa Karmakar finishes fifth

Cairo (Egypt), Feb 17 (IANS) India's star gymnast Pranati Nayak won the bronze medal in women's vault at the FIH Artistic Gymnastics Apparatus World Cup 2024 here on Saturday while compatriot Dipa Karmakar finished fifth in the same event. 

Tokyo Olympian Pranati finished third in the women's vault event with an average score of 13.620.

With the medal in Cairo, Pranati Nayak became only the third Indian to win a medal at the FIG World Cup series. Aruna Reddy, bronze in vault at Melbourne 2018, and Dipa Karmakar, vault gold at Mersin and bronze at Cottbus in the same year, are the previous winners.

In the FIG World Cup Cairo 2024 in Cairo, Pranati qualified for the vault final after finishing seventh in the qualifiers with an aggregate score of 13.166. She improved her performance in the medal round on Saturday and finished with 13.630 to finish third.

The Democratic People's Republic Korea gymnast An Chang-Ok took the gold medal with an average score of 14.230 while Bulgaria's Valentina Georgieva took silver, also with 13.620. Though Georgieva had the same score as Pranati, the Bulgarian finished ahead of the Indian based on technicality.

Rio Olympic Games star Dipa Karmakar, who narrowly missed a bronze in 2016, made the cut for Saturday’s medal round by finishing third with 13.449 points. In the final, she could only finish fifth with a score of 13.380.

None of the other Indians in action in Cairo made the medal round. Ritu Das finished 45th in women’s balance beam qualifying.

In the men’s events, India’s Ujwal Naidu finished 58th in the floor exercise and 40th in the vault, Tapan Mohanty was 31st in rings and 38th in parallel bars while Rakesh Patra finished 20th in rings.

The Cairo meet is the first leg of the FIG Apparatus World Cup 2024 series, which encompasses four different tournaments. The remaining three legs will be held in Cottbus, Germany (February 22 to 25), Baku, Azerbaijan (March 7 to 10) and Doha, Qatar (April 17 to 20).

All four legs of this year’s FIG World Cup series are qualifying events for the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympics.

Points from the best three performances out of the four qualifying events will be considered towards the Olympic Games qualifying. The two highest-ranked gymnasts per gender for each apparatus, provided they have not previously qualified and are eligible, will obtain Paris 2024 Olympic quotas via this path.

--IANS

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