Dipa Karmakar on Monday created history by becoming first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for Olympics as she booked a berth for the Rio Games. Apart from this, she will also be an Indian gymnast qualifying for the quadrennial extravaganza after 52 long years. She has been listed as the 79th gymnast among individual qualifiers in the list of women’s artistic gymnasts. It’s nothing new for her, she had finished fourth at the 2014 Asian Games, the first Indian female gymnast to win a medal at the 2014 Common Wealth Games & follow it up with another bronze at the Asian Championships in Hiroshima. She also reached the final round of 2015 World Championships & finished fifth.
In the qualification event held at Rio, her first vault, the extremely difficult Produnova gave her 15.066 points that is highest among 14 competitors. In beam & floor exercise, the gained scores 13.366 & 12.566 respectively have put her down, but her overall performance has pushed her up with all round scores of 52.698 points.
The girl has always been laborious & hard working. From the beginning, her target was to give maximum time for gymnastics. To devote herself in gymnast, she agrees with her father’s decision to switch to Bengali school. This was the biggest sacrifice according to her father. She eventually did her graduation & pursued Masters in political science. She always refused to take more than a day off from practice. She was clear about her focus on test event; even she skipped Gurugram & Kerala nationals for it. Former national champion, coach & government observer Ram Niwas, who identified Dipa’s talent and recommended her for SAI training five years back, credited the achievement solely to her and her coach Nandi. Her coach Biseswar Nandi said “She wants medal at any cost there and if she does as well as she did before, she can even get gold”.