World Artistic Gymnastics Championships | Ashish Kumar, B Aruna Reddy make the cut
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Railways’ Ashish Kumar and B Aruna Reddy were back on track with some scintillating displays in the open selection trials, making it to the Olympics-quota offering World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. The championships have been scheduled to be held in Stuttgart from October 4.
Former Asian Games medallist Kumar finished on top of the table with a score of 78.7 points to seal his place for the championships, at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Sports Complex on Monday. This was pleasantly surprising for the gymnast, especially after his below-average run since the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
His form was further seen dipping at the start of this season as well as he didn’t impress in the Croatia World Cup in May and even failing to make the cut for the Asian Championships in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. However, things changed after his short training stint in Poland.
“My fitness was a big issue. Even my technique was going from bad to worse. Hence focus was on both the aspects during advance training in Poland. I’m satisfied with my current performance,” Kumar said, reported HT.
2018 World Cup bronze medallist Reddy, who had also gone to Poland with Kumar for advance training, also made the cut on Monday and admitted that it helped them massively. “The fact that I’m making the squad after a long lay-off due to knee injury is good for my confidence ahead of the World Championships,” she said.
“Today, I didn’t push myself since the main goal was to make the team. But I would try to improve the difficulty of execution during the Worlds,” she added.
Among others, while Yogeshwar Singh of Services (77.6) and Aditya Singh Rana from Railways (77.5) finished second and third respectively among men, Pranati Nayak (50.75), Pranati Das (49.1), and Reddy (49.05) were the top three among women. The men’s section saw Rakesh Patra not appearing for the trials with Yogeshwar Singh and Debang Dey the only other two gymnasts
Shraddha S Talekar failed to make it to the final list after finishing fourth with total points of 46.3.Â
