Dipa Karmakar likely to miss Asia Championships after SAI’s abrupt change in plans
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With the Sports Authority of India now changing dates, venue, and eligibility criteria of the Asia Championship trials abruptly, top Indian athletes like Dipa Karmakar, Rakesh Patra, and others are likely to miss. The Gymnastics Federation of India has written a letter to SAI regarding the same.
The selection trials for the championship, which was supposed to be held in Mongolua from June 19-22, was suddenly changed by SAI to May 17 at the Indira Gandhi Stadium throwing India’s top gymnasts off gear. To further complicate things, the trials have now been limited to just 8-10 gymnasts, who were selected in the National Coaching Camp during the April trials conducted by SAI.
This essentially means that apart from Karmakar and Patra, the likes of Aruna Reddy, Siddharth Verma and Aditya Rana could also be in jeopardy. Consequently, more than 12 top gymnasts have written to SAI, Sports Ministry, as well as GFI, expressing their concerns.
The GFI also wrote a strong letter to SAI asking their concerns about the eligibility of the gymnasts who will be participating in the trials, the very short notice given to conduct them, the qualification of the judges who would be present for the trials, and most importantly the overall selection criteria.
“This is totally unfair and unacceptable act by SAI putting the gymnasts from across the country in undue hardship. Our gymnasts deserve an opportunity to perform at the trials, they deserve to have sufficient time to prepare for any trial and they deserve to have their performance judged correctly,” said, GFI vice president Riyaz Bhati, reported PTI.
“The Sports Authority of India is manipulating the situation under the guise of IOA and creating unnecessary confusion. This concerns an Asian Championships of Gymnastics and the IOA has no role whatsoever,” he added.
The federation had done their job by submitting a proposal to SAI on April 24 for the trials and team selection ahead of May 17, which was the deadline for sending the names to the tournament organisers. But, they are yet to get any response.
GFI general secretary Ranjeet Vasava, in his letter, wrote, “Restricting the trails to only a few gymnasts without the declaration of such policy and criteria in advance is unjustified.”
The GFI, reported PTI, also stated that conducting trials at such short notice will create “unnecessary burden on the gymnasts” and “expose them to injury”. They also expressed their unhappiness with the quality of judges stating that many of them are “not even qualified either as National or International” and any “irregularity in the selection of judges would compromise the whole selection process.”
GFI further stated that “the selection for all gymnasts is supposedly based on All Around” and with only three of the five members of a team perform that, selecting the others based on all-around score “does not make sense” for it will be on individual apparatus.
The federation also suggested that it should be allowed to “nominate up to 4 gymnasts each in MAG and WAG for the Selection Trials over and above the gymnasts who have been selected for the National Camp” and “trails should be postponed to the first week of June 2019 thereby giving a reasonable notice to gymnasts.”
