IANS
Agartala, August 21: Dipa Karmakar’s coach Bisheswar Nandi had once sought the intervention of the Tripura government to ‘save the career’ of the promising gymnast from ‘unnerving conspiracy’.
In a long letter to the secretary of the Tripura Sports Council, February 9, 2012, Nandi had explained the threat to her career as emanating from Gurdial Singh Bawa, the long-time chief coach of the Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI).
“When I raised the issue of deliberate partiality to pull Dipa down to second place in a tournament in Bangladesh, Bawa threatened to come to Agartala with a stick to chastise me,” Nandi, himself a five-time national champion, wrote in the letter. “I told him to come with a pistol if he could,” Nandi added, indicating his desperation about the entire situation.
Giving this information here Sunday, the coach of the path-breaking gymnast detailed how Dipa was relegated to second place to ensure the first position in the Sultana Kamal championships in Dhaka (Dec 28-30, 2011) went to Meenakshi, a protege of Bawa and another woman coach close to the GFI boss.
Nandi saw a ‘huge conspiracy’ in pushing Dipa to second place, though her performance was ‘far, far better than Meenakshi’s’.
When Nandi raised the issue after the tournament, Bawa was furious and threatened to destroy both Nandi as a coach and his promising protege Dipa.
Then in 2014, before the Glasgow CWG, Dipa again faced a problem. There was huge internal bickering in the federation over sending a team of gymnasts to Glasgow.
Dipa finally made the team and created history by being the first Indian woman to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games gymnastics after she bagged a bronze in the vault event. The 20-year-old from Tripura finished with 14.366 points.
Unlike Nandi, who was easily the best male gymnast of his era, Bawa is described in an internet CV as a ‘player’, not a gymnast in his pre-coaching career. He was a small-time footballer and is said to have emerged as a chief coach in gymnastics after starting off as a ‘helper of sorts’, as top Tripura and India gymnast of the 1970s, Lopamudra Ghosh described him.
The irony is that after having coached Dipa to Olympic glory, Nandi may still find himself deprived of a Dronacharya award.
“That is because Bawa is intensely lobbying to get a Dronacharya for his lifetime achievement as a gymnastics coach. But he has never produced a champion,” a bitter Ghosh said here Sunday.
Ghosh and other top former gymnasts from the eastern states have started a Facebook campaign for Nandi to get a Dronacharya award.
“We must ensure Nandi, and not Bawa, gets the Dronacharya if we want to pay respects to the legendary teacher of Mahabharata fame (after whom the award is named),” Ghosh informed.