Simone Biles says that she is not trying to die. Nor, for that matter, is Dipa Karmakar. But in the strange course of events that has been Dipa’s life, she has become the living master of the Produnova – a vault the best gymnast in the world would self-confessedly never attempt, because, as she says, she is not trying to die.
On August 14, at 11:30 pm in the night, U.S.A’s Biles and India’s Karmakar will compete against each other (and six others) at the vault finals of the Rio Olympics. They are both women at their first Olympics whose respective lives could not have been at greater contrast.
In every competition involving a podium, Simone Biles is a league of her own – so much so that other competitors only aim for the silver or bronze when she is present. At 4’8” Simone stands taller than every other gymnast in the world, carrying forward the legacy of U.S. women gymnasts who have not only won medals and overturned the eastern European dominance over the sport, but risen, turned, twisted, swirled and landed so lightly that a world’s audience has been forced to stop and take note.
Dipa, too, has made the world take note. She has also done the impossible and made a country like India take note of a sport as ignored as gymnastics. She is the first Indian to make it to the Olympics as an artistic gymnast. And as everyone knows, being the first in India in anything that is not within the public media eye, is an isolating journey.
National celebrity vs Unknown name
Where Biles has a team comprising four of the best women gymnasts of the world to run to whenever she sticks an improvised Amanar, Dipa has a solitary coach on the sidelines because India does not have three other Olympic-level women gymnasts to form a team around her. Where Teen Vogue runs features on Simone in the build up to the Olympics, India’s newspapers are only now running (faulty) graphics on Dipa’s trademark vault. Where America’s Ryan Seacrests and Ellen Degenereses invite Biles to their primetime talk shows, India’s Olympic goodwill ambassador cannot decide whether Dipa’s name is ‘Deepika’ or ‘Dipti.’
The cameras of the channel NBC which broadcasts the Olympics in the U.S. focus singularly on Biles and her American teammates to the point of even showing them stretching or staring into the distance instead of showing another gymnasts’s vault. Dipa’s viewers had to struggle to identify her in the background of the prelims. Just one of her vaults (not the Produnova) and her uneven bars routine were shown by the Olympic broadcasting service from which the south Asian channel had obtained its feed.
As Kim Kardashian and Zac Efron tweeted in support of Simone, Indians tweeted of the agony of listening to the music of Karmakar’s floor exercise while looking at a beam routine of a Great Britain gymnast. But the biggest point of difference between Biles and Karmakar is not in their wildly different reception through the Olympics.
Biles was adopted by her grandparents, along with her sister, when her mother proved unable to take care of them due to drug use. ‘Grandfather’ and ‘Grandmother’ became ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’ as initial struggle in foster care gave way to resounding success on the mat. At Rio, she already has two gold medals – one in the team event and the other as the all-around champion.
Biles is a natural athlete. At the age of 11, she was doing twists and tumbles under coach Aimee Boorman that artistic gymnasts of her age could not. 8,000 miles away, in Tripura, Karmakar was fighting a natural impediment. A pair of flat feet that makes balancing problematic for people and a career on the rigorous balance beam unthinkable. The condition made Dipa miss out on a Sports Authority of India sponsorship. But she persevered under the humble yet extensive training of her coach Bishweshwar Nandi. While American gymnasts trained in world class facilities, Dipa’s gym had a roof that would leak.
The gymnastics are a strange sport. From archery, to swimming and from shot putting to rowing sculls – the Olympics highlight sports that have been inspired by mankind’s struggle to survive in nature. To pin down the source of power in an event devoted to grace is difficult, but it is a task that athletes like Dipa and Simone make easy for us. With their success, these two athletes have made contemporary gymnastics about the athletic prowess of gymnasts and less about the scrutiny of their perceived feminity and elegance.
Simone may laugh between routines, hug her teammates after them, post selfies with other U.S. athletes, but she brings a strength on the mat that indicates that the struggle to present her legs exactly parallel to the balance beam as she somersaults on a four inch wide block of wood, is intricate and superhuman.
Gifted all-rounder vs Diligent specialist
But even at the top, Biles has one weakness – the uneven bars. It is almost impossible to overstate the relativity of this weakness. At the latest instance where she had a chance to be on the bars – the women’s individual all-around finals at Rio – she scored 14.966. This score is the second highest in the event and far more than apparent bar specialists.
Where Biles has one weakness, Dipa has just one strength – the vault. In the lead up to the Olympics, Karmakar trained almost singularly in her repertoire of vaults. Refusing a 30 lakh rupees grant from the Indian government, Karmakar instead demanded just one Olympic standard vault table and spring. And justice was sweet when it emerged at 5 am in the Indian morning of August 8, that Dipa had indeed made it to the vault final.
Biles already has an eponymous tumble in the floor routine – a difficult straight-legged double flip and a half twist. In gymnastics, the person to do an unforeseen vault for the first time, gets it named after him or her, following an approval and difficulty rating by Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique. Dipa has as good as claimed the Produnova as her own. It is a dangerous death vault that she must perform, lest a ‘Karmakar’ earn her a lower point with a lower difficulty rating.
If you see Dipa before her vault, she is usually looking straight ahead with a sense of alertness which travels through television screens and grips you on her behalf. ‘This is it’ she seems to say. She then goes on to do a two-and-half twists for which neither the human eye nor the video camera is prepared, so it has to be slowed down in a replay seconds later.
The difficulty of being Dipa Karmakar is distinctly different from the difficulty of being Simone Biles.
The tortured aesthetics of artistic gymnastics has place for both. When both run to the spring on August 14, their faces will make the same expressions of concentration, and no matter what the result, we will have seen something extraordinary.
