From being the poster girl of Indian gymnastics to failing to qualify for the final of her favourite event at the Asian Games, Dipa Karmakar’s struggles since the highs of Rio Olympics have been many. On Wednesday, it became worse when she was forced to pull out of the team finals after her knee injury flared up again. Dipa, however, has also qualified for the individual final of balancing beams and coach Bisweswar Nandi is confident she would be able to compete. “On Monday she started feeling a jerk in her knee while landing. In vault, you have to land from a height which adds to pressure on the knees. In balancing beam, the height is very less. It won’t affect her,” Nandi told The Hindu . Dipa herself, however, was downcast. “I am happy that for the first time ever, an Indian woman gymnast has made the final of balance beam, specially when it is not even my favourite event. But vault is what my identity is, missing out on it hurts,” she said with a wry smile. The fact that some of the strongest medal contenders from China and Japan also failed to make the vault final meant little. Pranati Nayak, Pranati Das and Aruna Budda Reddy took to the stage in the team finals on Wednesday evening as India finished seventh out of eight teams with a total of 138.060 points, 27.200 off the gold-winning Chinese side. Mandira Chowdhary was the fourth participant and performed on the beam. Dipa, though, was present one the sidelines to support and cheer her teammates. She had already stopped attempting the Produnova since her ACL surgery to avoid stress on her knee. In fact, Dipa had finished eighth among the participants and technically qualified for the vault final as well but with only two athletes from each nation allowed to participate in the finals, she had to miss out behind Aruna and Nayak and concede her spot to Fang Ko-Ching of Chinese Taipei. Nandi is confident she would be fine for the individual beam final on Friday. “This is not an injury per se, it is more of a precautionary decision to ensure she is fine for the individual final and other tournaments ahead,” Nandi said and added that the team had little chance of a medal in the final. “We could have finished with better points and maybe a slight improvement in position but medal was always difficult. It made no sense to risk her,” he said. Dipa had come back to competition only at the World Challenge Cup in Turkey recently, winning gold in vault.
