Dipa Karmakar Creates History, First Indian Gymnast to Qualify for Olympics Sunday April 17,2016

Dipa Karmakar on Sunday April 17,2016 created history by becoming the first ever Indian gymnast to qualify for the Olympic Games.

Dipa Karmakar produced a strong show, finishing ninth in the first of the four subdivisions of the women's artistic category, at the Final Qualifier and Olympic Test Event in Rio de Janeiro.

Dipa Karmakar garnered a total score of 52.698 points. Her final rankings will be known only after completion of the event with competition in three other subdivisions going on currently

Dipa Karmakar's first vault, the much difficult Produnova, gave Karmakar 15.066 points, the highest among the 14 competitors. But a poor show in the uneven bars took her points down as she collected 11.700, the second worse among the 14 participants.

Dipa Karmakar,the Tripura girl secured 13.366 and 12.566 points in the beam and floor exercises.

Note

Since the independence of the country, 11 Indian male gymnast have taken part in the Olympics (two in 1952, three in 1956 and six in 1964) but this will be the first for an Indian woman at the Olympics.

The International Federation of Gymnastics (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique) has confirmed Dipa's Rio Games qualification in its official release.

"Following the Women's Qualification Competition at the Gymnastics Test Event in Rio, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) herewith confirms the list of nations and individual gymnasts that have qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games," the world body said in its release.

Dipa has been listed as the 79th gymnast among individual qualifiers in the list of women's artistic gymnast who have qualified for the Rio Olympics.

About Dipa Karmakar

Dipa Karmakar, who hails from Tripura’s Agartala, did not enter into gymnastics by choice. 

In fact, it was a sport she had abhorred ever since she was initiated into it by her father, Dulal, a weightlifting coach. 

She was afraid of falling! However, with the passage of time, not only did she get used to the sport and overcome her apprehensions and dislike, she also began nurturing a burning need to carve a niche for herself. 

Trained by B.S. Nandi and Kaplana Debnath in Agartala, she improved in leaps and bounds.

Dipa came into the limelight last year at the Commonwealth Games (CWG) held in Glasgow, Scotland and won a Bronze, making it India’s first-ever medal by a woman gymnast in the CWG. 

Dipa Karmakar became the first woman gymnast and the second Indian to bag a Bronze medal at the sixth Gymnastics Asian Championships in Hiroshima,Japan held between July 31 – August 02,2015