Press Trust of India
Rio de Janeiro, August 6: She has already grabbed a piece of history by becoming the first Indian female gymnast to qualify for the Olympics and Dipa Karmakar would aim to touch greater heights when she competes at the Games, here Sunday.
Fighting against all odds, the 22-year-old diminutive girl from Tripura had qualified for the Olympics at this very venue in April. She has given her soul into mastering the highly difficult ‘Produnova’ move – a double front somersault vault – and is relying on it for a super show.
She informed that she has done about 1000 repetitions of the move so the key for her would be do well in the uneven bars, beam and floor exercises.
“I’ve seen her tremendous hard work and determination. Initially I was scared when she tried it (Produnova) but her never-say-die attitude makes her confident. We just need to stay focused,” her coach Biseshwar Nandi said.
Dipa however, does not like to sit back on her laurels and knows well that her focus should be on an Olympic medal to create a gymnastics revolution back home. After all, she has had several firsts.
Dipa was the first Indian female gymnast to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games (Glasgow 2014) and followed it up with bronze at the Asian Championships in Hiroshima. She also reached the final round of the 2015 World Championships and finished fifth – the best by any Indian gymnast ever. Later in the year, she won a bronze medal at the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo.
Nandi, who is doing most of the talking on Dipa’s behalf however, clarified that the odds are stacked against Dipa. “For any gymnast to succeed at such a high profile event like the Olympics, international exposure is essential,” pointed out Nandi. “But then Dipa doesn’t really get the chance to compete with other world standard gymnasts. We try to follow what is happening on YouTube. But then by watching something on the computer, you can’t just expect that a medal will follow you. It is because of her sheer determination, that Dipa has reached this far,” he added.
