When a sensational Dipa Karmakar proved that a fourth place finish was worth its weight in gold

The “Tsukahara 720”, the “Produnova” and now, the “Karmakar”? Can the high-flying Dipa Karmakar, in a not so distant future, own her delightful and highly skilful gymnastic move?

Tsukahara and Produnova may be tongue-twisters but “Kar-ma-kar” has a certain ring to it – “She got a 15.6 for her Kar-ma-kar execution”, commentators might belt out at future gymnastics events. It may all, of course, be a figment of the imagination, premature and even rash speculation, but Karmakar’s performance in the women’s vault final on Sunday merits superlatives.

Supreme, sumptuous, and sensational, all wrapped in one frail, athletic body. Karmakar finished fourth in the final and, with that performance, became the leading lady of Indian sports and the persona of the Indian contingent in Rio de Janeiro. Dipa Karmakar sparkles with stardust now.

The world stage

Sunday was yet another doomsday for India at the Olympic Games, apocalyptic in measure, depressing in repetition. Saina Nawal was eliminated after losing against world No. 61 Ukraine’s Maria Ulitina in badminton while PR Sreejesh and Roelant Oltmans were out of their depth and collapsed against Belgium in hockey at the quarter-final stage.

Across the road in Deodoro, India’s Gagan Narang and Chain Singh failed to qualify for the final at the windy shooting range in the 50 metre men’s rifle 3-position, while over at the Olympic Park in Barra Da Tijuca, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna enhanced the medal-less narrative, suffering a defeat at the hands of Czech mixed double duo Radek Stepanek and Lucie Hradecka in their bronze medal match.

The sprawling city of Rio has rapidly turned into a dingy grave for India’s sporting aspirations. Not so for Karmakar. In the vault finals, she had undergone a metamorphosis. In the qualifications, the girl from Tripura had entered Rio’s gymnastics arena with confidence, yet a little timid and shy, a teenage girl at the grand ball of her school.

At the finals, Karmakar beamed. She glowed. This was not the vault assembled from parts of an old scooter she was once trained on, but the vault of an Olympic final, with hypercritical judges and an elite field of competitors, with the United States’s Simone Biles as the sky-scraping favourite.

After consultation with her coach Bisheswar Nandi, Karmakar reversed the order of her vaults: the Tsukahara was V1, the Produnova, V2. The reason was simple: the first vault needed more attention to get a higher score. Karmakar owns the Produnova after all – it is Mount K2 of Olympic gymnastics, dangerous and treacherous and extremely difficult to execute – its degree of difficulty is a towering 7.0 – so much so that elite athletes, even at the Olympic Games, refrain from doing it.

Dethroning Biles was a utopian illusion, not only for Karmakar, but for the entire field. The American queen of gymnastics is of a superior order, not to be touched by subterranean mortals.

Those two magic minutes

Karmakar’s first vault – the Tsukahara 720, a half turn off the springboard onto the vault table, and then a push backwards stretched with a 2/1 turn – fetched a score of 14.866 points, with a degree of difficulty score of 6.0 and an execution score of 8.866. The score left Karmakar in medal contention. Then, she performed the Produnova, landing with some parts of her body a little too close to the mat, but still with overall superb execution. She smiled and hugged Nandi.

The judges rewarded her with a score of 15.266, the sum of the degree of difficulty of 7.000 and the execution score of 8.266 points. At that point Karmakar was ranked second with a score of 15.066, but with Biles and Maria Paseka from Russia still to come. Eventually, the Indian was pushed out of medal contention by the agonising margin of just 0.150 points. Giulia Steingruber of Switzerland won the bronze medal with an overall score of 15.266.

Yet, did it really matter? Karmakar’s rank had a shiny golden, silver and bronze coating, a victorious sentiment, notwithstanding the innate cruelty of a fourth place finish. India’s bittersweet romance with that rank – ask Abhinav Bindra – continues, but on Sunday, Karmakar, disarming, down-to-earth and dedicated, won souls and hearts.

Here stood a luminary, even by sports transitory standards, an icon at the age of 22. At Tokyo 2020, Karmakar will target a medal. By then a “Karmakar” may well be the standard practice in gymnastics.