Tokyo-bound gymnast Pranati Nayak excels in competition mode, says Dipa Karmakar
The 27-year-old will not be competing at Tokyo 2020 but is happy that a female gymnast will represent India at the Olympics once again
Whether they stumble or stick a perfect landing, gymnasts are trained to seal it with a smile. Dipa Karmakar is borrowing those values as she tries to cope with the disappointment of not qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics but celebrating the fact that India will still be represented.
In 2016, Karmakar had broken new ground as she became the first Indian female gymnast to qualify for the Olympics. An Indian female gymnast will feature in the Olympics for a second edition in a row as Pranati Nayak, two years younger to Karmakar, was awarded the continental quota.
“Of course I would be happier if I was also going to the Tokyo Olympics too,” Karmakar said of the bittersweet moment during a chat with Olympics.com. “But I am very happy for Pranati and as a senior, very proud of her.”
Nayak had won a bronze medal at the Asian Artistic Gymnastic Championships in 2019 and became eligible for the continental quota as the 9th Senior Asian Championships was cancelled due to Covid-19.
“I know Pranati since 2010. I met her when I had gone for a camp to Kolkata,” Karmakar said.
“Since 2014, four of us – Pranati Nayak, Pranati Das, Aruna Reddy and me – have been in the national camp together. We used to train with (Bishweshwar) Nandi sir. Not only did we bond very well, but we pushed each other. We had that hunger to do something. In the last few years, the four of us have been competing at international competitions regularly. No junior has been able to push us out yet.”
The 27-year-old believes that what sets Pranati apart from the crowd is her ability to excel in competitions.
“Everyone works hard,” said Karmakar. “But Pranati’s competition mindset stands out. Even if she used to take breaks in training, she would be up to speed with us in no time. She does her best in competitions.”
As the sole Indian gymnast to have secured a berth for the Olympics, Nayak will have the intense gaze of the whole country trained upon her this summer. Karmakar knows all about that. On the morning of August 15, 2016, sports fans across the country hung on to hope as the girl from Tripura launched into the death vault (Produnova). She finished fourth, just missing the podium by 0.15 points.
“Actually, I never quite felt the pressure,” Karmakar recalled. “I had won the test event in Rio two months before the Olympics and the atmosphere was very familiar. It was only in the (vault) final that I was a little anxious about how things would unfold. If I have to give Pranati any advice, it will be to treat it like any other competition. Don’t think of the pressure and expectations.”
Even though Karmakar bravely talks of Nayak and her maiden Olympic sojourn, she is understandably heartbroken over missing out on an Olympic spot.
“As an athlete, I am very disappointed that I finished fourth last time but haven’t been able to qualify for this Olympics,” she said.
It has been a roller coaster ride for Karmakar since that memorable night in Rio. Her breakthrough performance in 2016 earned her accolades and awards: Karmakar was given the highest sporting honour, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2016, the Padma Shri (fourth highest civilian award in India) in 2017 and featured in Forbes Magazine's '30 Under 30' Asia list.
But the gymnast also underwent an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) surgery in 2017.
She made a spectacular comeback, winning a gold medal at the FIG World Challenge Cup in Mersin, Turkey in 2018. Karmakar thus became the first Indian gymnast to finish on the top of the podium at a global event. She also won a bronze medal at the FIG Individual Apparatus World Cup in Germany, which served as an Olympic qualifying event.
Just when things were looking up, she was set back with knee and thigh injuries again.
“These last four years, I have seen the highest of highs and lowest of lows,” Karmakar said. “We never used to think about an international medal or a World Cup medal, let alone a gold, but I won it.
“Not participating in the 2019 World Championships was mentally very tough for me. At that time, I was thinking whether I will be able to continue in the sport. But my coach and family used to keep me motivated and said I could do it again. I had started to do well again and was hoping to translate that at tournaments. But with Coronavirus disrupting the schedule, I couldn’t do much.”
Till last month, Karmakar had been training to participate in one or more of the World Cups on the FIG (International Federation of Gymnastics) calendar and qualify for Tokyo 2020. But the pandemic has been snuffing out chances, and with it, hope.
“For the last 22 days everything in our area is shut, so I have only been doing fitness at home,” she said. “It’s only 75 days to go for the Olympics. There are one or two World Cups still on the calendar that are not cancelled, but I don’t think they will happen.”
For now, Karmakar is content that someone will walk in the trail she had blazed almost five years ago.