A Vault To Remember

Despite missing out on a medal in the Rio Olympics, gymnast Dipa Karmakar is part of sporting history

- Paramita Chatterjee & KathaKali Chanda

On August 14 around midnight (IST), Dipa Karmakar started her sprint towards the vaulting horse, in what was to be her final attempt at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She had already made it to the history books by being the first Indian woman gymnast to reach the Olympics as well as the finals of the event. But the diminutive 23-year-old wasn’t going to sit smug. Instead, she wanted to sign off with flourish by executing the Produnova, a risky vault that even multiple gold-medal winning American gymnast Simone Biles had shied away from. Anything less than perfect, and the gymnast could land in a heap, leading to a potentially fatal injury.

Karmakar reached the apparatus with peak speed, sprung high into the air off it with a front handspring, and did a double somersault before landing on her haunches. The end wasn’t perfect—points were docked for not landing on her feet—but she regained her balance in no time and completed a manoeuvre that only four other gymnasts have managed (a few somewhat dubiously) since Russian champion Elena Produnova, the one it’s been named after, first achieved it in 1999.

Karmakar narrowly missed a podium finish in Rio—she fell 0.15 points short of bronze winner Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland—but her performance catapulted her from near-anonymity in the country to limelight on the global stage. Words of praise poured in from peers, Biles included; she was accorded a reception on a par with medal winners PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, and was recently conferred the prestigious Padma Shri award. Most important, Karmakar is now a household name in a country that is often accused of a blinkered devotion towards cricketers.