AGARTALA: In a ground-breaking achievement, Dipa Karmakar from Tripura clinched the gold medal in the women’s vault apparatus at the Asian Gymnastics Championships 2024, held at Tashkent in Uzbekistan on Sunday (May 26).
This victory marks the first time an Indian gymnast has won a gold medal in any event at the Asian Championships.
Indian gymnasts had previously secured four bronze medals at the continental championships.
Dipa Karmakar herself had won a bronze in the women’s vault in 2015.
Other Indian medallists include Ashish Kumar in the men’s floor exercise in 2006, and Pranati Nayak in the women’s vault in 2019 and 2022.
In the women’s vault final in Tashkent, the 30-year-old Olympian achieved an average score of 13.566, surpassing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Kim Son-hyang (13.466) and Jo Kyong-byol (12.966).
Despite finishing 16th in the all-around category on Friday with a score of 46.166, Dipa Karmakar did not secure a Paris 2024 Olympics quota for India.
The Philippines’ Emma Malabuyo, who finished third with a score of 50.398, claimed the only Olympic quota available from the Tashkent meet.
Nevertheless, the vault gold adds to Dipa Karmakar’s remarkable list of achievements in Indian gymnastics.
She was the first Indian female gymnast to compete at the Olympics, finishing a commendable fourth in the women’s vault at Rio 2016, the best performance by any Indian gymnast at the Summer Games to date.
In addition to her recent success, Dipa Karmakar won the women’s vault gold medal at the 2018 FIG World Cup in Mersin, Turkey, becoming the first Indian to win a gold medal at a global gymnastics event.