The proudest man on earth right now should be Dipa Karmakar's father. The man who for so many years has been training young weightlifters in the Andaman Islands. He wanted Dipa to follow his footsteps and be a weightlifter but to the joy of an entire nation she chose Gymnastics and we are thankful to her for that as she has become the first Indian female to Qualify for Olympics.
On Sunday i.e. the 17th of April she created history by becoming the first Indian female gymnast to qualify for the Olympics. We should take some time off from whatever we are doing and laud this amazing feat of Dipa. Hailing from a small state of Tripura in the extreme eastern part of India, she barely had the means to achieve what she has and we should be very proud as well as concerned to take care of her and make sure she succeeds in whatever she wants to do in life as talent like hers is rare in India.
During the early nineties female gymnasts were given cult like status in the Olympics and I am sure lot of Indians also wanted to see one among us in the world stage performing the acrobats so beautiful to see.However the craze of cricket was too strong for us to look at any alternate sport and the dream to produce a world class Gymnast was lost somewhere.
But since the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, we Indians got the first sniff of a young prodigy who could do wonders in Gymnastics.That young prodigy was none other than Dipa who went on to win a Bronze medal in the Glasgow games. This was not a small achievement as she was the first Indian female to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games and for a girl who was told at her childhood that being a flat-footed kid she wont achieve much in Gymnastics. How she proved everybody wrong is there for us to see now. Also it is remarkable that during the Glasgow games she was nursing an injury and that made the victory even more sweeter for her.
I am sure given the conditions in India she must have faced lot of difficulties coming up the ladder. Starting at the early age of 5 she credits her success to her coach Bisbeshwar Nandi and her parents.
Known to be a master of the "Produnova"(a deadly move which can result in breaking the spine and neck if done incorrectly) on the mat earlier she had to quickly learn "Tsukahara" within flat 3 months before the World Championships.Others have been known to take years to master the new move. Also she was unsure whether she will be allowed to participate in the World Championships or not owing to lack of a Federation to represent. This is a situation lot of our budding Gymnasts face.Her determination since childhood was to perform at the world stage and what better way to do it by representing a Billion people at the Olympics.
Now that she has achieved something which was deemed impossible earlier, we should open our hearts to this 22 year old Gymnast with a broad smile from Tripura and make sure she gets every possible support required to the run up to the Rio Olympics.
regards
Sportzmap
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