Sudeep Pakrashi:
Pranati Nayak bagged a bronze medal in the vault at the 2025 Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships at the Jecheon Gymnasium in South Korea on Saturday.
The 30-year-old gymnast from Bengal, now based in Bhubaneswar, scored 13.466 to finish third behind Yihan Zhang from China and Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Quynh Nhu.
The other Indian in contention, Protistha Samanta, missed out on a podium spot, finishing with a score of 13.016 and ending up in fourth place.
Nayak also broke Deepa Karmakar’s record after ensuring her third continental medal on Saturday. Nayak has earlier won vault bronze medals at the Asian Championships in 2019 (Ulaanbaatar) and 2022 (Doha).
Pranati’s coach Ashok Kumar Misra although expected silver from his student in the championship, sounded satisfied about Pranati’s performance while speaking over the phone from Jecheon on Saturday. Misra now is aiming for Pranati’s medals in the Commonwealth and Asian Games next year.
“She has now been more confident in her front landing. I want to apply a little bit of innovation in her third vault so that her performance can be more competitive and help her to increase the score, explained Ashok.
Pranati now is executing 720 tsukahara in her first vault and then 540 with a full twist and steady landing. Ashok wants her to execute more twists in her third landing and he opined, “Pranati still has such a desire and determination, I hope she will adopt the innovation within the next few months.”
