Kolkata: She may have missed out on an Olympic medal by a slight margin but Dipa Karmakar, India’s first even woman gymnast to qualify for the event at the biggest stage, feels she is not far from World Championships gold medalist Simone Biles.
“Both Simone and Dipa are yet to participate in a tournament after the Olympics. Wait and see. The scores will show the difference when we compete,” said Deepa in a felicitation programme at the Goenka College of Commerce and Administration in Kolkata.
The 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medalist, who suffered a crucial Anterior Crucial Ligament (ACL) injury keeping her out of the major part of 2017 is nonethess confident of a good comeback.
“Injuries are part and parcel of a sportsperson’s life. Even (Cristiano) Ronaldo suffered ACL injury. So that’s part of our lives and we have to get over it. I have now come out of it and I feel good after resuming training. I am mentally more focused to achieve bigger success,” she added.
The injury may have hampered her career to some extent given the form she carried during the 2016 Rio Olympics, nearly winning a bronze medal for the country. But the Padma Shri awardee sees it otherwise. The injury has only made her mentally stronger and increased her hunger to win she feels.
“I am mentally stronger now and want to achieve something. I don’t think it’s a pressure,” said the 2015 Asian Championships bronze madalist, who has already began her preparation for three next for the next commonwealth Games. “My preparation has begun, I am slowly getting on to training, let’s see what happens next. I will be joining the camp in Delhi from next week on December 11,” the 24-year-old added.
For someone who is just one of the five women gymnasts to have successfully landed the Produnova, which is regarded as the most difficult in women’s gymnastics, Dipa however believes that she will have to master more vaults inorder to win gold medals. “I have already done Tsukahara 720 and Handspring double front, which includes Produnova move and now I am working on the new vault, Handspring 540.”
Her heart-wrenching performance in the 2016 Rio Olympics inspired many to take up Gymnastics and talking to future stars, the 2016 Khel Ratna awardee concluded, “The next generation of gymnasts are very promising. They came fourth and fifth in the recently concluded Asian Championships. I am hopeful we will have more gymnasts coming from India, heading towards the right direction.”