Dipa Karmakar, the Indian gymnast queen of the Produnova, retires

Signing off from the mat! ❤️

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my journey.
Onto the next chapter🤸🏻‍♀️🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/kW5KQZLr29

— Dipa Karmakar (@DipaKarmakar) October 7, 2024

Of course, she knew it was called the ‘Produnova’. She’d watched the tall Russian legend Yelena, a hundred times on video, learning her eponymous skill. But it just didn’t roll off Dipa’s tongue with any sign of pretension or pride. She called it by its clunky name, “handspring forward double salto tucked 360.”

When the 30-year-old 4th-place finisher at the Rio Olympics announced her retirement on Monday, she again found the exact words. “Today, I feel so happy when I look back at that Dipa, who had the courage to dream,” she would write.

The sport is excruciatingly tough on the body, so calling time on her career after surgeries on both knees, after she couldn’t qualify for Paris, isn’t entirely surprising. But when she started out on the Produnova specifically at 18 (she could pull off its deconstructed versions since 14), it would’ve needed raw courage.

Three men told her she could rule the world with Produnova. Her father, a government-stadium weightlifting coach in Tripura, who trained her to be a strong girl, with strong legs, never mind her flat feet. Her coach, BS Nandy, who pored over Russian gymnastics literature in his youth, and broke down the movements into executable bits, standing by her side throughout. And Ashish Kumar, an equally audacious gymnast from Allahabad (now Prayagraj), who at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, started the trend of gunning for routines on the Floor and Vault with highest Difficulty scores, to maximise chances of winning. D-scores were assured, execution could be worked on.

Dipa wasn’t reckless or foolish to want to try out the Produnova back then, attempted only by three others, not with much success. It was a simple calculation – 7 assured points out of 20, the highest possible in gymnastics. The Produnova would later be downgraded to 6, mostly to dissuade young gymnasts from risking their limb in pursuit of medals.

But Nandy and Dipa stayed crystal clear – if the technique was meticulous, the physical conditioning inspired confidence in her mind, and they gave it enough repetitions, Dipa could get proficient at it, without making it risky.

Vindication

There were medals at World Cups and Asian Championships with high scores of 15 +, and of course the big night in Rio, when she ended 4th, sticking a decent landing.

Gymnastics’ powerhouses would mutter their disapproval thinking her recklessly ambitious, often-clumsy landings earned her penalties without fail. But, Dipa would stick to clockwork, trust her training and plod on.

She was no mug on some of the other tougher vaults like a Tsukahara, proving she was an authentically adept gymnast, not some freak, uncaring of her neck. But even there, it had to be the Tsukahara 720 – two complete aerial rotations, the maximum do-able.

Bad times cackled in, inevitably. She failed a dope test in 2021, and accepted a suspension, because she said she couldn’t fathom how the substance entered her body. The ban cast a long shadow on her career – she wasn’t quite seen fit to be part of the funded group for the Asiad thereafter, despite serving the ban. A qualifying competition in Germany ahead of the Paris Olympics wasn’t cleared by the authorities. The knee surgeries and sub-par rehab had put the Produnova in cold storage long back.

But prior to that, Nadia Comaneci loved the Indian’s attitude and courage. And grudging respect was whispered gradually as the world got used to the sight of the little Indian woman doing her thing earnestly and proficiently, without getting herself killed.

Indians, who understood very little of the stormy debates she triggered in international circles by merely attempting the Produnova, feted her without being bothered by the chatter. They adored Dipa, unabashedly and wholesomely, when she was successful.

India – with no history in gymnastics, and no future really to speak of – didn’t really make much use of Dipa’s legacy. No Indian gymnast even made the Paris Games cut. But, for those few minutes when she charged at the vault in Rio and spun at altitude generating her own momentum, she had the country’s undivided attention, and India’s love for Dipa was absolute.