Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar will be conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri award later this year for her performance in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Karmakar, who finished fourth and missed a medal by a whisker, has been rewarded for her efforts as an athlete at the international level.
Hailing from the remote state of Tripura, Dipa won a billion hearts as she finished fourth in Artistic Gymnastics at the 2016 Rio Olympics - best-ever performance by an Indian gymnast in the Olympics history.What makes her feat extraordinary is that she is only the 5th woman in the history of gymnastics to land the extremely dangerous Produnova Vault.The 23-year old gymnast also represented India in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and won bronze in the women's vault event. Dipa is only the second Indian gymnast to have won a Commonwealth Games medal (2014).She finished fourth in the Asian Games in the same year and then won bronze at the Artistic Gymnastics Asian Championships in Japan in 2015.
A five-time national overall individual champion between 2010-2014, Karmakar was given the Arjuna Award in 2015.Besides being the first Indian woman, she became the first Indian gymnast to qualify for the Olympics last year after a gap of 52 long years. The last time Indians participated in gymnastics in Olympics was way back in 1964, but during that time there was no qualification system in place. Six men competed at Tokyo 1964 in the artistic individual all-around category.