New Delhi: Eyeing Asian Games glory nearly two years after a rare death-defying stunt in sport’s biggest stage, gymnast Dipa Karmakar will still need to overcome the ‘fear factor’ that plays in the mind of an athlete following a career-threatening injury, according to her coach Bisweshwar Nandi.
A knee injury has kept the 24-year-old out of competition since her historic fourth place finish at the 2016 Rio Olympics, in which she landed her ‘Produnova’ perfectly enough to emerge among the top eight.
The recovery has been slow, but now she is ‘almost there’, and the Asian Games is still some months to go. “I would say she is about 90 per cent fit now. She will start taking full load from next month onwards,” Nandi told this agency.
Nandi confirmed that Dipa will resume training at the start-of-the-art SAI facility here from this week. Nandi however, is quick to point out that the competition level at Asian Games will be tougher than the Commonwealth Games.
“You will have China, Japan and the two Koreas. They all boast of Olympic medallists. So I can’t say whether she can win a medal. She has to peak at the right time and most importantly leave aside the fear factor that she might get injured again,” Nandi pointed out.
“As a coach, I know you can’t just erase the injury from your memory. It might prevent you from giving your 100 per cent but you have to find a way to deal with it,” said Nandi.
Dipa, anyway, will not be attempting Produnova – the vault of death – anytime soon, informed Nandi. “It is not the time to try out something new also. So we have to keep focusing on the old moves minus the Produnova,” he stated.
“As a coach, I know it is very difficult to overcome the fear of injury once you have been hit by it. But one has to find a way around it”
Bisweshwar Nandi
