Gymnast Nayak grabs bronze medal at Antalya World Cup

Kolkata:

Pranati Nayak

on Saturday grabbed bronze in the vault final at the

FIG World Cup

in Antalya, Turkey. The gymnast, who represented India at Tokyo Olympics, finished third behind gold medallist Jayla Hang and silver medallist Claire Pease – both from the US.
Nayak earned an aggregate score of 13.417 which was enough to help her earn her first international medal of the year. While her first vault — a Tsukahara 720 Twist with fixed landing — helped her score 13.600 points, she was awarded 12.834 points for her second vault — Handspring Tuck Salto with full twist, fixed landing.
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Speaking on her performance, coach Ashok Mishra was expectedly ecstatic and said, “She did superb vaulting today (Saturday). What’s great is that she even improved her score from her qualifying score of 13.317. Moreover, the competition was quite tough, but she still was able to grab a medal.”

Interestingly, she was able to deny Oksana Chusovitina — the 49-year-old eight-time Olympian — from making it to the podium after she had grabbed gold at Baku World Cup earlier this month. Chusovitina, who represents Uzbekistan, earned an aggregate score of 13.367 points to finish fourth here.
As for Hang, she got a score of 13.667 while Pease earned 13.567.
For Nayak, her next target will now be winning a medal at

Asian Championships

, where she bagged a bronze in vault in 2022. However, coach Mishra wants her to go for a medal in the all-around category which will certainly be quite challenging.
“I also want her to earn a direct qualification to the World Championships which will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October,” added the coach who trains Nayak at

Gymnastics High Performance Centre

in Bhubaneswar.
To make sure she is able to do that, Nayak will not only have to work on her techniques but also her physical fitness and increase her leg strength, which she herself admitted in a recent interview has gone down in the recent months.
And this bronze will surely give her the motivation to put in that extra effort, because after all her main target is doing well at Commonwealth Games and Asian Games next year.