Return to glory: A spate of injuries, in addition to a doping ban, had kept Dipa Karmakar out of the limelight for a while. But the 30-year-old has bounced back in style with a stellar performance at her most recent outing at the Asian Championships. While an Olympic run in Paris this summer still seems a distant possibility, Karmakar is back among the medals, and will look to go from strength to strength as she approaches the latter half of her career. To celebrate Karmakar’s latest feat, My Kolkata looks back at her finest achievements till date
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A first for India at the Asian Gymnastics Championship: The girl who put Indian gymnastics on the map has just reignited that flame by becoming the first Indian to win a gold medal at any Asian gymnastic competition after clinching gold in the senior women’s vault finals during the 2024 Asian Gymnastics Championship at Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Karmakar finished with an average score of 13.566 to finish above Kim Son-hyang from DPRK who scored 13.466. Despite her achievement, Karmakar has unfortunately not yet made the cut for the Paris Games, which can only happen courtesy a miracle at this point
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A gold-laden 2018: July 2018 was another high for Karmakar when she got the Indian flag to the top of the podium by becoming the first Indian gymnast to win a gold medal at a global event at the FIG Artistic Gymnastic World Challenge Cup in Turkey. Later into the year, Dipa won bronze at the German leg of the FIG Artistic Gymnastic World Challenge Cup. Both these accolades came a year after Karmakar was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth-highest national award
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Riveting in Rio: It was Karmakar’s fourth place finish in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Summer Games that made the nation take note of gymnastics. Her display in Rio — so close to giving India a medal — was the inspiration behind several youngsters across the country turning their attention to gymnastics as a career option. The Olympian was duly awarded with the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award for her outstanding performance on the grandest stage
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Setting the bar at Commonwealth: Before the Rio Olympics, Karmakar won a bronze medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where she became the first Indian woman to win a gymnastics medal at the Commonwealth Games. She followed it up with a bronze medal for her third place finish at the Asian Gymnastics Championship in Hiroshima in 2015. It was in the same year that the gymnast received her first national recognition in the form of the Arjuna Award
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Nailing the “Vault of Death”: Karmakar is one of only five women to have successfully landed the Produnova. Said to be the “Vault of Death”, the precision required to successfully land the Produnova can be the margin between life and death. Should the athlete fall short of two rotations, they could break their neck. The lethal move is named after Yelena Produnova, the Russian gymnast who was the first to do it successfully in 1999. Only Yamilet Pena, Fadwa Mahmoud, Oksana Chusovitina had executed the Produnova in a major competition before our very own Karmakar successfully completed the Vault of Death twice, once in Glasgow 2014 and once in Rio 2016. Since then no female athlete has landed the Produnova
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