Gymnast Dipa Karmakar sets sights on Rio Olympics glory

Dipa Karmakar, the 22-year-old gymnast who scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman to qualify for the Olympics and capped it with a gold medal at the test event in Rio de Janeiro, returned to her hometown Agartala today and expressed that her next target will be to create new records at the Rio Games in August.

Accompanied by her coach Bisweswar Nandi, Dipa was given a warm welcomed by a large number of fans and sports lover at the Agartala airport.

"My next target is that I give my best performance at the Olympics and hopefully create another history," said Dipa.

When asked how tough the competition at Rio was, Dipa said: "It was a very tough competition as I had to compete with Oksana (Oksana Chusovitina of Germany), the vaulting silver medallist of 2008 and was thrilled after beating her. I am very happy that I got qualified for the Olympics."

Meantime, Dipa's coach Bisweswar Nandi informed that for one week Dipa will be in mental rest but to keep herself fit she will continue practicing for sometime daily.

"We are returning to national capital Delhi on May 1 where her actual practice will take place so that her performance is better. This time the competition was very tough but we did not lose our courage," said Nandi.

In the women's vault final of 2015 World Gymnastics Championships, Dipa finished fifth in a strong field of eight gymnasts, which included individual all-round champion and last two year's silver medalist in vault, Simone Biles of USA.

In the Commonwealth Games 2014, Karmakar won bronze medal in the same event, becoming the first Indian woman Gymnast to do so. Later she also won bronze medal at Hiroshima during Asian Championships.

Since independence in 1947, only 11 Indian male gymnast have taken part in the Olympics (two in 1952, three in 1956 and six in 1964) but this will be the first for an Indian woman at the Olympics.

According to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), Dipa is the 79th gymnast among individual qualifiers in the list of women's artistic gymnast who have qualified for the Rio Olympics.

Her first vault, the much difficult Produnova, gave Dipa 15.066 points, the highest among the 14 competitors. But a poor show in the uneven bars took her points down as she collected 11.700, the second worse among the 14 participants.

The Tripura girl secured 13.366 and 12.566 points in beam and floor exercises.

Since 2007, Deepa has won 78 medals including 68 gold and she is one of the few woman gymnast who performs for the Produnova vault because of the risk involved.