BackNo easy vaults for Indian gymnastics
Dipa Karmakar made history at the Commonwealth Games, but gymnastics remains down and out
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Dipa Karmakar sticks her tongue out, makes a face, and moves around the foam landing at the gymnastics pit at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi stadium.
“Whenever she gets time, this girl will run away to the mall," says Bisheshwar Nandi, her coach. “There she will find a McDonald’s to eat a burger. With cheese, mayonnaise, everything."
That is perhaps the only complaint coach Nandi has about his star student as she trains for the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea (19 September-4 October). The 21-year-old from Tripura made history just a couple of months ago, becoming the first Indian woman to win a medal in gymnastics at the international level. She got the bronze in the women’s vault event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Glasgow, Scotland.
“Somehow I knew that I would return from Glasgow with a medal," says Karmakar. “I had worked too hard not to be rewarded. But honestly, I’m not fully happy. Yes, it is a bronze medal, but it’s okay."
For the gymnastics world, it was an earthquake. In Glasgow, Karmakar rolled out a Produnova, which involves a handspring double front-vault, and it has been a topic of debate in the gymnastics world for some time now. Named after Russian gymnast Yelena Produnova, the act is downright dangerous, and threatens to seriously injure the neck and spine. Small wonder then that only three gymnasts in the world, Karmakar included, are currently training and performing the Produnova.
It’s something Karmakar and her coach started working on three-four months before the CWG. The idea of even attempting a Produnova with any other student did not cross Nandi’s mind. “I just suggested that it’s something we could try," says Nandi, who represented India as a gymnast in the 1982 Asian Games. “We’ll see how much progress we make before going to Glasgow, and then decide what to do." Karmakar got right down to it.
In the final of her event at Glasgow, there were five Olympians competing alongside Karmakar, two of them medallists from the 2012 London Olympics. “I was nervous. But Sir told me, just imagine you are in IG (Indira Gandhi) stadium where we train every day, okay?" says Karmakar.
The third-year BA student may choose to be nonchalant about her historic feat, but that’s not how everyone else reacted. “See, our gymnastics community is a small one. When gymnasts, coaches and officials in Glasgow got to know that an Indian girl was going to attempt the Produnova, there were only two talking points in and around the athletes’ village: Dipa Karmakar, and the Scottish referendum," says Jim Holt, the American coach who has been with the Indian team for 10 months.
Karmakar’s state, Tripura, understands the sport of gymnastics slightly better than other regions of the country. Not the finer nuances perhaps, but many of them do realize that her bronze from Glasgow is more precious than some of the golds won by Indian athletes there. “I attended 17 felicitations in one single day," chuckles Karmakar.
The daughter of Sports Authority of India’s (SAI’s) weightlifting coach, Dulal Karmakar, Dipa tried her hand at various other sports before settling for gymnastics at the age of 5. After doing well at the junior level, she got picked for senior camps quite early. The fact that she has achieved what she has, with limited facilities, and at an age that is late in her sport, is what makes it all the more incredible.
Gymnastics is a risky sport, to say the least, and safety equipment like foam pits and safety stands are of the utmost importance. But only four-five centres in India have a foam pit, a basic requirement which costs at least ₹ 25 lakh. “Tripura is a small state, there is no way the state government is going to approve my budget of ₹ 1 crore for my gymnasts," says Nandi. “So I brought Dipa to Delhi, when they procured a pit here just before the Commonwealth Games."
Gymnastics is fully dependent on government funding. Despite three medals from two CWGs, and one historic Asian Games medal in 2010, there has been little improvement in funding. Before the 2010 CWG, the sport got an annual corpus of ₹ 2.5 crore, which was raised to ₹ 4 crore for the CWG, an unprecedented ₹ 13 crore for the 2012 Olympics, and then, uniquely among all Olympic disciplines, the funding was brought down to ₹ 2.5 crore after 2012. Compare that to shooting, which has an annual corpus of ₹ 20 crore at its disposal, plus private sponsorships; boxing’s funding has been virtually doubled from ₹ 10 crore in 2012 to ₹ 19 crore from 2013; badminton gets ₹ 12.2 crore.
Gymnastics gets no corporate or private investment because its administration is in poor state too. Thanks to warring officials who were operating out of two separate associations, the Gymnastic Federation of India got de-recognized by the sports ministry in 2012. The biggest impact was the lack of competition, including national championships, and the absence of exposure trips for Indian gymnasts.
The Indian team’s former Russian-American coach, Vladimir Chertkov, under whose watch Kumar won his medals, quit in 2011 after the sports ministry failed to clear his plans for the long-term development of the sport. Chertkov spent his entire tenure at war with the sports ministry and the federation and said at a press conference before leaving, “...There is no reason to continue wasting my time and the Indian taxpayer’s money."
At the Glasgow games, Kumar fell flat on his second vault, finishing last in the final. A stark contrast to the 2010 games in New Delhi, where he won a silver and a bronze. “When you go to such a big event without any competition at all, you are hesitant," Kumar, 23, says. “If we had even six months of training and exposure tours, I would have had no hesitation while performing. I went for this competition with zero confidence. Gymnasts from Great Britain and New Zealand came for the Commonwealth Games having competed in 60-70 competitions. If you add up the total events in my entire career, it won’t be more than 15-20."
And every single person kept telling me, “Beta, tere se medal chahiye (Son, we want a medal from you)."
The pressure was too much, and the tears, after his failure, were difficult to hold back.
Kumar’s current challenge, though, is to do well at the Asian Games. It’s a race against time, since he is nursing an injury. A large part of his day is spent at his physiotherapist’s clinic, and upper-body exercises and training are all he is allowed.
The bigger worry is that Karmakar isn’t fully fit either. An ankle injury that she sustained in Glasgow hasn’t healed yet.
“I won’t lie. But we are not going this time with the promise of a medal," says Nandi, even as his ward scrutinizes a training video that this reporter shot on her phone. She doesn’t seem happy about her knees bending after her landing. With no video analyst to help them, Karmakar requests that the video be sent to her.
“I think people at least now know of gymnastics as a sport in India," Karmakar says. “Earlier, they used to think of it as circus. And most people who have seen gymnastics on TV think it’s a dance form where you get to wear pretty costumes. I hope that changes."
She tapes her injured ankle as she gets ready to shut out everything else and get ready for a gruelling training session.
Suprita Das is a senior sports correspondent with NDTV.
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