Dipa Karmakar

#37/100 in #100extraordinarywomen

Dipa Karmakar is an artistic gymnast who represented India at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She is the first Indian female gymnast ever to compete in the Olympics, and the first Indian gymnast to do so in 52 years. She attained 4th position in Women's Vault Gymnastics event of Rio Olympics 2016 with an overall score of 15.066. She first gained attention when she won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, becoming the first Indian female gymnast to do so in the history of the Games. She is being supported by the GoSports Foundation under the Rahul Dravid Athlete Mentorship Programme. She also won a bronze medal at the Asian Gymnastics Championships and finished fifth at the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, both firsts for her country. For her wonderful performance in Rio Olympics 2016, the government of India conferred upon her the Khel Ratna Award in August 2016.

Dipa was born on 9th August 1993 to a Bengali family hailing from Agartala in Tripura. She started practicing gymnastics when she was 6 years old and has been coached by Soma Nandi & Bisweshwar Nandi since then. When she began gymnastics, she had flat feet, an undesirable physical trait in a gymnast because it affects their performance. Through extensive training, she was able to develop an arch in her foot. In 2008, she won the Junior Nationals in Jalpaiguri. Since 2007, Dipa has won 77 medals, including 67 gold, in state, national and international championships. She was part of the Indian gymnastics contingent at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where Ashish Kumar won India's first-ever Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal. 

Dipa competed in the 2011 National Games of India, representing Tripura. She won gold medals in the all-around and all four events: floor, vault, balance beam and uneven bars. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Dipa won a bronze medal in the women's vault final, thanks largely to her Produnova vault, which has a difficulty value of 7.00. She received an average two-vault score of 14.366. She was the first Indian woman to win a Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal, and the second Indian overall, after Ashish Kumar. At the 2014 Asian Games, Karmakar finished fourth in the vault final with a score of 14.200, behind Hong Un-jong, Oksana Chusovitina, and Phan Thị Hà Thanh. After the competition, she said, "See, the two top girls here are the gold and silver medalists in the Olympics, while the third girl was bronze winner at the World Championships. So I'm more than happy that I gave them a good fight and finished fourth here." At the Asian Championships, held in Hiroshima from July 31–August 2, Dipa won the bronze in women's vault while finishing 8th on balance beam. In October 2015, she became the first Indian gymnast to qualify for a final stage at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She scored 14.900 on vault in the qualification round to secure her place for the finals, where she finished 5th with a two-vault average of 14.683. 

On 10th August 2016 at the 2016 Olympic Test Event, Dipa Karmakar became the first female gymnast from India to qualify for the final vault event at the Olympics, with a score of 14.833. She narrowly missed out in the bronze medal, finishing 4th in the finals of the event with a score of 15.066 on 14 August 2016 at the Gymnastics Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where Simone Biles won Gold.

Dipa is only the fifth woman in gymnastics history to land the Produnova vault, or the handspring double front. The Produnova* is an artistic gymnastics vault consisting of a front handspring onto the vaulting horse and two front somersaults off. The vault currently has a 7.0 D-score, and is the hardest vault performed in women's artistic gymnastics. This vault also known as the “Vault of death”, and not without a reason. A BBC News package begins with Dipa’s chilling statement: “One wrong move and I could die on the spot.” Nobody has ever died doing the Produnova but it’s not a far-fetched exaggeration. The possibility of a serious injury is real if the gymnast does not land properly on her feet or if the twists go horribly wrong. In the latter scenario, you could land on your head, your back or in some other awkward position. A poorly executed move left the Soviet Union gymnast Elena Mukhina a quadriplegic in the 1970s. So, why did Dipa chose it? An upbringing in a family of limited economic means puts you far, far away from an Olympic medal in gymnastics. If you are distanced from the margins of elite sport, you don’t get anywhere without taking risks imbued with the greatest dangers. The structural limitations are far too big to be surmounted by two front somersaults. This is why Dipa kept going even when an injured ankle threatened to hold her back at the Commonwealth and Asian Games two years ago. Her path to participation at the Olympics demanded a battle with pain that distorts the ideal sport seems to promote. The public perception is that sport is good for us. It keeps us healthy. Tell that to someone doing the “vault of death”. When asked whether she would ever attempt the Produnova, the current-day darling of gymnastics Simone Biles told The New Yorker, “I’m not trying to die.” Many other gymnasts view the move with similar apprehension. No wonder then that it is rated so highly. However, the level of difficulty involved in carrying it out means that judges may score gymnasts attempting it leniently. In fact, there have been suggestions that the Produnova is set to be marked down severely soon in order to discourage gymnasts. The considerable risk has meant that there have been many detractors. But, still there are some gymnasts, like Dipa, who try this risky vault as it guarantees them seven points because of the difficulty level and even faulty execution gives them a shot at a medal. Nevertheless, the inherent risks in Dipa’s daring skill move, of course, hold little fears for her. Such is the level of her mastery, and which we were fortunate to sample in Rio. She told the Wall Street Journal, “Now it’s the easiest vault for me. I hope this vault becomes more famous than me in India. The vault is very dangerous. I say, ‘Thank you, I like risk.’ ”

Dipa now will train for 2020 Tokya Olympics. And since it is rest period for Dipa, she and her coach are found here every evening, carefully examining the many future gymnasts in the making.

Source: Wikipedia and Google search.

*P.S. As a trivia on the sidelines of the above article, the Produnova is named after Yelena Produnova, also known as Elena, a former competitive gymnast from Russia, whose senior international career lasted from 1995 to 2000, and earned her multiple world and Olympic medals except gold which somehow always eluded her. She is known for her innovative and powerful skills on the vault and floor exercise and is one of the few gymnasts to have skills on all four events named after her:

Apparatus	Name	Description	Difficulty
Vault	Produnova	Handspring double front salto	7.0
Uneven bars	Produnova	Uprise/clear hip to handstand, half turn to L or mixed L grip	C
Balance beam	Produnova	Jump forward with 1/2 twist to back pike salto	E
Floor exercise	Produnova	Split leap with a full turn to land in a split	C

Source: Wikipedia