Dipa Karmakar has already made history by becoming the first Indian female gymnast to qualify for the Olympics. In a few hours, she could again hit the headlines if she can successfully pull off her signature move – the Produnova vault.
The gymnastics qualifying will start from 6:15 pm (IST) today, with Dipa pitted against seven other gymnasts in her third qualification group. The top 24 overall gymnasts advance to the all-around final, while the top eight scorers on each apparatus qualify for the individual apparatus finals. While Dipa stands a chance to win a handful of medals like all other competitors, her best chance is in the vault apparatus, where she will unleash her ‘jump of death’.
Dipa’s chances depend on her ‘execution’ scores in her pet event, the vault. While she has racked up high scores on the ‘difficulty’, her execution scores have been a little lower. In the 2014 Commonwealth Games and 2015 World championship, Dipa totalled 14.066 and 14.683, performances which showed sparks of genius. At the 2012 London Games, the vault medals were decided between 15.8 and 15.049, which shows that Dipa needs to score consistently above 15 to get into the medal places.
Yesterday, Frenchman Samir Ait Said suffered a horrific broken leg on the vault in men’s qualifying. The double leg fracture has shocked everyone and raised questions over the scoring system, which pushes athletes to heights where they are forced to try increasingly dangerous moves.
But Dipa, the first gymnast to qualify for the Olympics from India in 52 years, isn’t going to let the possible chance of injury stop her. The news of Samir Ait Said’s mishap may have cast a shadow of doubt in some athletes’ minds but Karmakar isn’t one to back down from the fight.
Having achieved a bronze medal at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games after performing the Produnova, Dipa will target the deadly vault again in her hope for victory. She says that she has practised the double front somersault move a 1,000 times already. The gymnast from Tripura believes that her extensive training has given her the capability of pulling off the Produnova at the Rio Olympics easily.
“I’ve seen her tremendous hard work and determination. Initially, I was scared when she tried it but her never-say-die attitude makes her confident. We just need to stay focused,” her coach B. Nandi said.
It was exactly this kind of attitude that allowed Karmakar to book a seat to Rio. She was the first Indian female gymnast to bag a medal at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and then a bronze at the Asian Championships at Hiroshima.
Dipa, who is the daughter of a weightlifting coach, won 5 gold medals at the 2015 National Games in Kerala in each individual event – all-round, table vault, uneven parallel bars, balancing beams and floor exercises. She was one of the top medal winners at the event.
A few months later, she went on to win a bronze medal at the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships that took place in Japan.
Today she’ll face a test like she’s never faced before, as she competes against the best in the world. Even after the frightful incident with France’s Ait Said during men’s qualifying while performing a dangerous vault, an unflinching Karmakar is determined to win a gold with her daring performance.
We have started our live coverage of Dipa Karmar here.
