India's Dipa Karmakar on Sunday created history by becoming the first Indian gymnast to enter the Olympic finals at the Rio Olympic Centre in Rio de Janeiro.
She managed to perform her much-vaunted 'Produnova' vault cleanly to score 14.850 on the vault, 11.666 on the uneven bars, 12.866 in balance beam and 12.033 in floor exercises.
Here's the vault that landed her in the Olympic finals.
"I'm happy but wish I could have done a bit better. In practice, I perform way better than this," Dipa said.
And here is Dipa performing in uneven bars for which she secured 11.666.
In April, she created history by becoming the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for Olympics.
She scored a whopping 15.066 against the highest of 15.100 in the Produnova event.
The 22-year-old from Tripura is also an Indian gymnast qualifying for the quadrennial extravaganza after 52 long years.
At the age of 20, Dipa became the first woman gymnast from India to win a Commonwealth medal. In the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, she bagged a bronze medal. With that feat, she also became the third woman in history of gymnastics to successfully land the Produnova vault. Only five athletes in total have successfully completed the Produnova.
The Produnova is also sometimes referred to as the "Vault of Death" because of the risks involved it.
The Wall Street Journal Describes the vault as such: "The Produnova vault, which is named after Russian gymnast Elena Produnova, who first landed it in 1999, is technically a front-handspring that erupts into a double somersault. More simply, the Produnova is what happens when you sprint at the vault and catapult high enough to flip twice in the air."
It also has the highest difficulty rating among all vaults, i.e. 7.0.
“There can be death if you land on the neck, there’s death if you go down headlong. It is risky, I know. But to win something, I always knew I had to take a risk," Dipa was quoted as saying by DNA earlier.
She added, “I’d seen boys do it, so why not? It’s tough because when you land after two aerial somersaults, the weight that comes on the leg is double – if I’m 45 kg, the legs have to take 80-90 kg. Now, imagine landing on the neck instead, which can crack under such weight. I don’t imagine the worst, it doesn’t work like that."
In the 2016, Rio Olympics, only two gymnasts will be performing the Produnova- India's Dipa Karmakar and Uzbekistan’s Oksana Chusovitina.
"In the last three months,” Dipa told PTI, “I did 1000 repetitions of the move. Now it is the easiest vault for me."
In 2015, she won the bronze at Artistic Gymnastics Asian Championships in Japan.
Watch the video here:
Watch #DipaKarmakar at the #AsianGymnasticChampionships, where she won bronze. @GoSportsVoices#AthleteMentorships pic.twitter.com/asIubSxiOm
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