Gymnastics

Gymnastics came of age in India, when at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Ashish Kumar won the first-ever medal in gymnastics for India in the form of bronze. However, soon after the win, the president of the Gymnastics Federation of India, controversially asked Kumar's chief coach from the Soviet Union, Vladimir Chertkov, "Is this all that you can deliver, a bronze?" The comment was widely reported in the press. Later, the coach revealed that, "In August 2009, we had no equipment. Ashish trained on hard floor till February 2010, and then we got equipment around 20 years old." The federation announced that no Indian team would travel to Rotterdam for the World Championships in October, which would mean that Indian gymnasts would not have the opportunity to qualify as a team for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Ashish also won a silver medal in the Men's vault at 2010 Commonwealth Games. It was Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, from where India's glorious path in gymnastics started taking shape slowly, when Dipa Karmakar from Tripura, a small state of India, went on to win bronze medal in the Women's vault finale. But it was not her medal that stuns the world, but its her 2nd vault, the most difficult vault with a D-score of 7, the Produnova vault, named after famous Yelena Produnova of Russia, also known as the vault of death due to its difficulty and likelihood of injury, which she executed with a score of 15.1 (D-7, Ex- 8.1) which help her to get the precious bronze[68]. With this attempt she became 5th gymnast to ever execute the Produnova just after legendary gymnast Oksana Chusovitina who executed multiples times.In October 2015, Karmakar became the first Indian gymnast to qualify for a final stage at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Later in 2016 when she qualified for Rio Olympics, she became first Indian gymnast to do so and also hours after her qualification at 2016 Gymnastics Olympic Test Event she clinched gold medal in Women's vault event stunning Oksana Chusovitina with her prudunova again who came second to her. On 6 July 2016, FIG honored Dipa by naming her World Class Gymnast. At Rio Olympics she achieved 4th place in vaults. After a long break due to injury when she ran for vaults and landed with a gold at World Challenge Cup series. Her medal is second to first ever medal won by any Indian, was won by Aruna Reddy at FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup Melbourne, where she secured the bronze medal in the individual vaults.