Gymnast Dipa Karmakar Becomes The First Indian Athlete To Qualify For The World Gymnastics Competition
Culture & Lifestyle Oct 26, 2015
Athlete Dipa Karmakar made history on Sunday when she became the first Indian to qualify for the World Gymnastics Championships.
This is a huge victory for Karmakar, who has participated in five World Championships and who came seventh last year in Switzerland. The 22-year-old received a 14.9 for her efforts this year, which pushed her into the finals. It's a full-circle moment for Karmakar, who has been practicing gymnastics since she was six years old — but with a major hurdle of flat feet, which are quite a disadvantage in this field.
"I still remember Dipa coming to me as a flat-footed kid, which is not good for a gymnast. It affects the spring in her jump," said Bishweshwar Nandi, her coach, to Firstpost. "That was the hardest part to fix for Dipa. We had to work very, very hard when she was a little kid to get the curve in her feet."
Since then, she's managed to win bronze at the Commonwealth Games last year and at the Asian Championships in Hiroshima this year. But the turning point for Karmakar was seeing fellow gymnast Ashish Kumar become the first Indian to win a gymnastics medal at the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
Even with her amazing success, Karmakar has faced tremendous hurdles in finding adequate training grounds for her vault gymnastics in India. For eight months, Nandi and Karmakar had no equipment to train with because of a lack of facilities in Agartala. Then the Sports Authority of India (SAI) organized a two-month training camp that started in June this year, with the Asian Championships starting in the beginning of August.
She's also faced the underrepresentation of her sport in India, where cricket rules as the unofficial national sport. Gymnastics are a very underfunded and misunderstood sport according to Karmakar, who used to feel offended by comments comparing her to trapeze artists.
"I used to feel extremely hurt when people associated my sport to circus tricks. It is only after these international wins that people have begun to understand vault gymnastics…. Today, people abroad respect me as much as they would a gymnast from Slovenia, Japan or China. The warm reception feels good and now people are aware that Indians too can be good at artistic gymnastics," said Karmakar to The Bangalore Mirror.
Karmakar, at 22, is much older than the usual teenagers or tweens that occupy the majority of gymnastics abroad. But she looks to Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, 39, an Olympic gold medallist, as an example that age has no bar over gymnastics or recognition.
If she gets a medal in the World Championship finals, Karmakar will qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics, which would be an amazing feat. Even without this accomplishment, Karmakar is an inspirational young woman who's putting India's other forgotten sports under the limelight, which she's proud of. She says, "Things have changed now. Before Glasgow, Indians hardly knew our women participated in gymnastics. Now they know there is someone who won a medal. Before, no one knew my name. Today, slowly and steadily, more and more people know there is someone called Dipa Karmakar."
Rumnique Nannar
Author
Rumnique Nannar is a new journalist with a passion for all things pop culture, film, and art. Rumnique was born in London, with a predilection for devouring English chocolate with her Vogue, ANOKHI, and Glamour magazines in tow. She is currently in her Journalism Masters at UBC. Connect ...
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