Dipa Karmakar
Gymnast
If we all know our pennyworth about the Produnova, it’s courtesy Dipa Karmakar. When she executed the hardest but hardly-performed vault at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2014, she brought home a bronze medal, and also a lot of buzz. In the event, she also became the first Indian woman to win a medal in gymnastics at the CWG. Only five women in the world have landed the vault with a 7.0 difficulty and Karmakar is one of them.
In the past two years, Karmakar has performed the Produnova at multiple international championships, and each time experts and commentators have winced and sat with their heart in their mouth as she pulled it off. She won a bronze at the Asian Gymnastics Championships and also finished fifth in vault at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships last year. The latter, though, wasn’t enough to book her a slot at Rio. The Produnova has been her lifeline, one that helped her stack up the points and finish in the vicinity of a medal. In the bargain, she’s become the girl who does the death-defying leap. Each time Karmakar performs the vault with the front handspring and two front somersaults, she lives the risk of a broken neck or back. But it’s a risk, as she often says, she has chosen to take.
Karmakar may now be used to the many ‘firsts’ that are tagged to her name. The latest for the girl from Tripura is being the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Olympics. Her Olympic berth didn’t come easy though. At the Test event in Rio, her last chance to qualify, it was the Produnova again which made the bulk of her 52.698 points. Her scores on the other apparatus, particularly the uneven bars, were nowhere near her vault performance, which had her topping the event.
Karmakar is now the first Indian to qualify for Olympics gymnastics in 52 years. The last time this happened was at Tokyo in 1964 when six male gymnasts took part. Anything she achieves at Rio will be a landmark, but a personal one she’s sure to cross is turning 23 during the Games.
Aditi Ashok
Golfer
The year 2016 is a defining one for Aditi Ashok. She finished school. She turned professional. And she also qualified for the Olympics. Golf returns to the summer Olympics after 112 years. Much sheen is off the event as, so far, 19 golfers, including the men’s fab four, have pulled out citing Zika and security. The women, though, are headed for intense competition, Lee-Anne Pace being the only one to pull out till now.
In golf’s comeback edition, Ashok will represent India along with Anirban Lahiri and Shiv Chawrasia. Ashok made it to Rio after breaking into the top 60 of the International Golf Federation rankings. For the 18-year-old, the youngest in the Indian contingent, the Rio ticket is the culmination of systematic planning over the past four years.
Ashok finished her amateur career in December last year, at number 11 on the World Amateur Golf Ranking. She teed off being the best Indian and best Asian amateur last year. Ashok is now a full member of the Ladies European Tour (LET). The fraternity sat up to take notice when she made history last December to be the youngest and the first Indian to win the LET Lalla Aicha Tour School in Morocco. This, while still an amateur, and when the field boasted competitors from across the world.
Dutee Chand
Sprinter
The first Indian woman to run the 100 metres in the Olympics since 1980 — Dutee Chand’s journey to this landmark has been peppered with controversy and humiliation. The 20-year-old, born to a poor weaver couple in Odisha’s Gopalpur town, was banned by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) for having high “male hormone levels”. Though the hormone count was never made public, IAAF claimed that the sprinter’s body produced more androgens than most women, thereby putting a question mark on her gender.
Following the ban, Chand was compelled to shift her focus to fighting the IAAF against her disqualification as well as the controversial policy that discriminates against athletes with “atypical sex development”.
Raised in a mud hut without a toilet or potable water nearby, Chand’s run-in with the international sports body started in June 2014, just days after she bagged two golds at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships in Taipei. She was summoned to Delhi by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI). Shortly after her arrival, an AFI doctor ordered an ultrasound. Three days after the test, the federation, in a letter to the Sports Authority of India, raised doubts on Chand’s “gender”, and recommended a verification test. In a whirlwind of developments, Chand was packed off to Bengaluru, where, after scrutiny by nurses and physicians, her condition was described as DSD (disorders of sex development). The one-year ban followed soon after.
A disconsolate Chand found an anchor in Payoshni Mitra, a researcher and activist who encouraged her to take the matter to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport. A three-judge panel, after hearing the case for four days in March 2015, ruled that the IAAF’s testosterone policy was “unjustified by current scientific research”. This was music to Chand’s ears, who had been accused of bringing “embarrassment to the fair name of sports in India”.
On June 25 this year, Chand clocked 11.3 seconds in the heats at the 26th Kosonov Memorial International Athletic Meet in Almaty to qualify for Rio.
(For more on the case, read here )
Dattu Bhokanal
Rower
Dattu Bhokanal saw little water as a child. Yet the 25-year-old from Talegaon, a drought-stricken village in Maharashtra, was aquaphobic. The only water he’d seen in his growing years came in tankers, which were the lifeline for his village. It wasn’t until 2012, when he joined the army, that Bhokanal learned to swim. He booked his ticket to Rio after winning a silver at the Asian and Oceania Olympic Qualification Regatta in South Korea in April.
Bhokanal was encouraged to take up rowing in the army by his first coach. Despite the support he got from his coach and seniors, the 6 ft 4 inch tall rower wasn’t confident of his skills in the initial years. In several interviews to newspapers and news agencies, Bhokanal mentioned the frequent “toppling” out of boats, which made him doubt a future in the sport. It was a fifth-place finish in the double sculls at the 2014 Asian Games that reassured him. The next year, he won a silver in single sculls at the Asian Championships in China.
Following the death of his father in 2011, Bhokanal had given up his studies to support his family. Just days before his departure for the Regatta in South Korea, his mother fell and slipped into coma due to brain damage. The two-time gold medallist in the 2014 National Rowing Championship is the lone rower from India at Rio. But the pressure doesn’t seem to fluster the man who hopes to bring back a medal and use the media attention to solve the crippling water crisis in his village.
Compiled by P Anima , Aditi Sengupta