12-Year-Old Gymnast From Manipur To Represent India In World Aerobic Championship

Manipur state young gymnast Ariha Pangabam will be representing India in the upcoming 14th FIG Aerobic World Championship and 7th World Age Group Competition, organised by the Federation International de Gymnastic (FIG) to be held from June 13 to 19 at Incheon, South Korea.

Ariha Pangabam (12 years) who is currently studying in Class 7 at Kendriya Vidyalaya School took up gymnasium as her favourite sports discipline in the year 2014. Through her hard efforts in this short period of time, she is now representing India in the World Championship. Ariha began her training in gymnastic when she was 10 years old under the supervision of SAI coaches Prithilan, Sanayaima, Dhaneshwori and YAS Department coaches Ranjita and Bhunel.

It may be mentioned that Ariha clinched the third placed title in the State Gymnastic Competition (Under-12), organized by the Manipur Gymnastic Association in 2014. In 2015, she represented Manipur in the National School Games, held in Kolkata. She got through a trial selection of National Age Group Aerobic Gymnast on April 24, 2016, to represent India in the forthcoming International Competition.

Ariha who is representing the country has trained hard under coach Y Ranjan at Khuman Lampak Indoor Stadium and without any financial assistance from any side. In India, this game has not gained popularity. Ashish Kumar who won a bronze at 2010 commonwealth games is the first sportsmen from this field to reach this height. But this did not satisfy the Chief Coach from Soviet Union Vladimir Chertkov and he smacked saying “Is this all that you can deliver, a Bronze?” Later revelations were made that there was no equipment for training and the player had to be trained on the hard floor until February 2010 and equipments that were procured afterwards were 20 years’ old.

The Logical Indian wishes best of luck Ariha and we hope she makes us proud. This is not the first time that females from the North East part of India are making India proud. Dipa Karmakar, 22, hail from Agartala won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, held at Glasgow becoming the first Indian female gymnast to do so in the history of the games. She is also one of the five women that have successfully landed the very difficult Produnova vault in competition, also holding the highest score amongst all.