Dipa Karmakar is an artistic gymnast. She represented India at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She hails from the north eastern state of Tripura. She created history by becoming the first Indian woman to qualify in the individual Vault finals in the Rio Olympics 2016.
Here are 15 unknown facts about Dipa Karmakar who is pride of India :
1) Dipa Karmakar started practicing gymnastics when she was just 6 years old. She has been coached by Soma Nandi & Bisweshwar Nandi
Since.
2) When she began gymnastics, she had flat feet an undesirable physical trait in a gymnast because it affects their performance. Dipa
had to put in the extra shift to get the curve in her feet so that she could compete at the highest level.
3) Since 2007, She has won 77 medals, including 67 gold, in state, national and international championships.
4) Dipa Karmakar had no equipment to train with for over eight months when she relied just on personal training to prepare herself for
the 2014 Commonwealth games. However, the scenario changed and the Federation arranged for a two-month camp for the gymnasts to
train. Coach Nandi credits the camp for her achievement in Hiroshima.
5) Her first greatest achievement came in 2014 when she won Bronze Medal at Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
6) She was the first Indian woman to win a Commonwealth Games gymnastics medal, and the second Indian overall, after Ashish Kumar.
7) At 2014 Asian Games she finished only fourth in the vault final. She gave tough competition to Top three who were eventually Gold and
Silver Medalists of 2012 London Olympics and Bronze Medalist at World Championships respectively.
8) Karmakar is Obedient but short on temper. By her own admission, Dipa Karmakar has moments where she loses her cool, often at times
of disagreement with her coach.
9) By her own admission, Dipa Karmakar has moments where she loses her cool, often at times of disagreement with her coach.
10) She has chosen gymnastics over education. She was enrolled in a Bangla school so that she could pursue gymnast as other English
medium schools in the region were very strict with their attendance Policy.
11) Dipa Karmakar’s holds record of logging highest score of 15.300 in Produnova – an artistic gymnastics vault. It is a high risk maneuver
and only five Gymnast in history has completed Produnova. Only Two In Olympics.
12) On 10 August 2016 at the 2016 Olympic Test Event, Karmakar became the first female gymnast from India to qualify for the final
vault event at the Olympics, with a score of 14.833. She missed out on the bronze medal, finishing 4th in the finals of the event with a score of
15.066 on 14 August 2016 at the Gymnastics Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
13) Karmakar is only the fifth woman in gymnastics history to land the Produnova vault, or the handspring double front.
14) She has won Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 2016.
15) She is recipient of Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India.
My coach (Bisweshwar Nandi) was frightened when I first started doing the vault because he thought I could break my neck or end up dead but I was eager to try and push the boundaries, sir (Nandi) even got a telling off from the team’s foreign coach for allowing me to perform this vault because it was too risky. But my coach and I felt we had to take some risks if we wanted to compete with the best.
– Dipa Karmakar
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