Dipa Karmakar will become the first Indian woman gymnast to compete in the Olympics after securing a place at this year’s Rio Games during a weekend qualifying event.
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Dipa Karmakar makes India proud by not only being the first Indian woman gymnast but also the foremost to make the grade for quadrennial extravaganza after 52 years.
Apart from being the first Indian woman, she will also be an Indian gymnast qualifying for the Olympics after 52 long years.
At the world championships in Glasgow last November, Ms Karmakar, who is from Agartala, became the first Indian to qualify for an apparatus final, where she finished fifth on the vault.
Sonowal congratulated Dipa for her feat and for taking Indian gymnastics to a high.
Dipa’s feat must be lauded for two reasons – firstly, when her father, a wrestling coach, introduced her to the sport at the age of six, she had a huge fear of falling.
“She wants a medal at any cost there and if she does as well as she did before, she can even get gold”, her coach Biseswar Nandi told The Hindu from Rio.
The International Federation of Gymnastics (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique) has recently confirmed the qualification of the Dipa in the Rio Games i.e., in their official release.
“The athletes will be happy with the results they we have achieved”, he said. However, despite her mastery over that particular move, her performances in the other categories had kept her outside a podium finish at the World Championships, keeping her out of the Olympics. But Karmakar made it off of the reserve list and into yesterday’s qualifier, where she wowed in her performance-and made history, of course. She has qualified for the Olympics and then has won a gold now.
“I hope to see more people take up the sport and I am pretty sure it will flourish in our country”.
This is going be to be first time ever in the history of Olympics that an Indian woman will participate in its gymnastic events.
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The Produnova vault consists of a front handspring and two front somersaults and is considered to be one of the most hard to perform.
