Twists, vaults and somersaults: Dipa Karmakar's qualification brings popularity for gymnastics

The Excelsior American School in Gurgaon is typical of the plush, new schools that India's new rich prefers to send its wards to – centrally air-conditioned, nicely laid out with elaborate and well-maintained arrangements for extra-curricular activities, especially sports. The Sports Complex at the school is a three-storied building, with a large gymnastics hall on the second floor. It's a well-lit, colourful room, designed to appeal to children. One half of it is covered in cushioned mats; there's a balance beam and various bars — parallel, high and asymmetric, a vault, a spring-board and other equipment.

The gymnastics programme at the school is managed by Future Fit, a sports education/fitness start-up run by two Gurgaon entrepreneurs Nidhi Mathur and Vitika Banerjee. With the school closed for summer, Future Fit has been running a gymnastics summer camp and, despite the stiff fees of nearly Rs 5,000 per month, has not had a dearth of takers. Three coaches take the 15 children, mostly girls between the ages of six and nine, through the paces, watching as they turn cartwheels, tumble and roll, guiding them through the more difficult bar while parents sit watching on low plastic chairs in a corner.

It's a world apart from Vivekananda Byamagar in the Tripura capital Agartala, where Dipa Karmakar, the 22-year-old gymnast from the state who recently qualified for the 2016 Rio Olympics, began her training! She is the first Indian woman and the first Indian in 52 years to do so.

In a BBC video-clip soon after her Olympics triumph, Karmakar revisits the gymnasium where she began learning at the age of six. As she walks in, you can see a foam mat laid out on the bare mud where children can be seen jumping gleefully; the Byamagar itself seems to be a brick structure covered with an asbestos roof; and inside, you can discern barbell racks used for weightlifting somewhere behind the asymmetric bars.

There's no air-conditioning and everything seems covered in a layer of dust. "There was no proper equipment," Dipa's voice can be heard as the camera pans across the room. "There wasn't even a vaulting table so we would pile mats one on top of the other, and use that instead. In the monsoons the gym would get flooded. There were rats and cockroaches roaming about."

Karmakar special claim to fame is the Produnova, considered one of the most difficult and dangerous vaults in women's gymnastics, fetching the highest seven points among the front handsprings. Karmakar is only one of five women to have executed it successfully in a competition — the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, a feat that won her the bronze. Karmakar also has the record for the highest Produnova score — 15.300 — among the five successful attempts. And yet, says Bireshwar Nandi, her long-time coach, Karmakar began learning the Produnova without a foam pit so necessary to minimise the chances of injury when trying out this risky vault.

Karmakar's success, like that of so many of our athletes from remote corners of India, from lower- to middle-income families who make it on the international stage by dint of their talent and hard work, is inspirational.

High interest, low investment

Naturally, there's increased awareness and interest in the sport across India. Nandi, who's now in Delhi with Karmakar training for the Olympics, says he gets seven to eight calls a day from gymnasts/parents who want to train with him.

Enquiries over the phone have gone up since Karmarkar's success, echoes Mathur of Future Fit. In Mumbai alone, an estimated 10,000 children of different age groups train in gymnastics. Varsha Upadhye, rhythmic gymnastics coach and a judge at international competitions, estimates that the number of children taking to gymnastics has increased by 25 per cent in the last decade.

Besides this, says Future Fit's Banerjee, their partner schools, especially ones like the Excelsior American School, have started to include gymnastics as a differentiator from the established schools where the only sports on the curriculum offered are cricket, football, badminton, basketball or swimming.

"Setting up even a basic gymnastics hall requires an investment of Rs10 lakh which not many schools are ready to make," she says. It's a lot, but some schools are seeing it worth their while.

"Gymnastics is the 'mother of all sports', especially good for very young children. It builds flexibility, fitness and also sharpens their minds," adds Jeanie N. Aibara, principal of Ambience Public School in south Delhi which has set up a gymnastics facility and intends to offer it as a fixed part of its curriculum in the junior classes from the next session. "It will help when they take up a different sport later."

But for all the increased interest in gymnastics, the sport continues to languish in India both at the top and grassroots levels — as a result of mismanagement, corruption and laxity of administrators.

It was this that perhaps that rang the death knell for the career of Ashish Kumar, who became the first Indian to win bronze and silver medals at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games. There was a very public spat between then Gymnastics Federation of India (GFI) president JS Kandhari and Kumar's Russian coach Vladimir Chertkov, who alleged that the equipment was old and in shambles. A series of injuries and the feud between Chertkov and the GFI perhaps contributed to Kumar's downward career spiral.

Such is the factionalism within the GFI that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had to step in in early March with a stay order on the 24th Rhythmic Gymnastics National Championships because separate tournaments were being organised by the warring cliques in March and April in Hyderabad and Mohali. "It effects motivation levels very badly because athletes don't know when their performances will be declared invalid, when they'll be told that the tournament they participated in was not the official one," says Delhi-based Richa Rathore, a coach who won a bronze at the 2010 National University Games.

Making matters worse, the GFI, which depends on the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports for financial resources through the Sports Authority of India (SAI), doesn't recognise the federation. "Unless SAI recognises the federation, it won't release funds," says Deepak Kabra, an international gymnastics judge in men's artistic gymnastics. "I am given to understand that SAI had set aside Rs.3 crore for gymnastics in 2015, but that perhaps about Rs.1 crore or so was spent. There is sheer indifference at the central level and no coordination with states and gymnastics associations."

Against all odds

The disarray in the GFI manifests in the woefully inadequate facilities across clubs in the country. Talk to coaches, gymnasts or parents, and anecdotes abound of martial arts mats being substituted for foam pits, sub-standard equipment, wobbly pommel horse and parallel bars that don't bend as they are supposed to.

All a far cry from the 10,000sq ft, air-conditioned indoor gymnasiums commonplace internationally. "This poses a huge risk of injuries because there is no consistency or standardization in the equipment," says Harish Parab, who runs The Gymnast club at the Prabodhan Thackeray Krida Sankul in Vile Parle, Mumbai. "The parallel bars may not both be of the same consistency for example. Or there'll be nuts and bolts jutting out."

This can have an unsettling effect when athletes compete in international events. Vandita Raval from Mumbai, who represented the Indian team at the 33rd Artistic Gymnastics World Championship in Belgium in 2013, found it hard to get a balance or grip on equipment there. "The bars or beams we train on here are of a certain quality, but when we go abroad, it takes time to adjust to the equipment there. Often times, the transition is jerky and not graceful," says the 27-year-old.

In rare cases, the lack of certified equipment may be fatal. Coach Rathore recalls one boy from the local school gym where she practised who died of a damaged spine after landing hard on his feet.

Coaches Parab and Upadhye both concur that despite the hurdles, the kids they train and the gymnasts they coach have immense grit, guts and determination to pursue the sport. "By nature, we Indians like to struggle," says Upadhye. "Our kids come to train come rain or shine. But in the US and Europe, a little bit of rain is all it takes to keep kids indoors."

On his part, Parab takes a group of 10-12 girls from Mumbai to Pune to train at the Balewadi Sports Complex every Saturday. The 44-year-old gymnastics coach and the girls train throughout Saturday and Sunday and return to Mumbai on Sunday evening. They've been doing this every weekend for the last six years. "The girls, even though they miss family time and get no break, never complain because they see the importance of training at a better set-up. It boosts their confidence," says Parab.

This routine will likely change by June when Prabodhan Thackeray Krida Sankul gets a refurbished gymnastics space, complete with foam pits and Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique-certified gym equipment – something that no other club in the city or country can boast of. The new space and the equipment has cost the club about Rs.35 lakh – an amount a majority of clubs and schools would balk at shelling out. But then setting up a gymnastics space is an expensive proposition.

At the individual level, parents with financial wherewithal take their wards abroad for training. "Gymnastics is a small sport in the country. Facilities and coaching in India fall short," says Lopa Gandhi, whose daughter Aditi has been training at the World Championship Centre in Houston for the last two months and had trained in Singapore for a month in 2013.

While the facilities are superior, the training culture is very different, Aditi says over the phone from the US. "There are other aspects of the training that are missing in India, such as facilities for ice-baths after training or regular sessions with physiotherapists or recovery massages."

Similarly, Kavita Jain, whose daughter Lavanya ranked ninth in the Under-17 School Nationals, travels with her daughter to tournaments and ensures they stay at a hotel since the facilities offered are "appalling". Lavanya, she feels, has shown a real aptitude for gymnastics; it's her interest as well. "She spends hours watching YouTube videos of gymnastic tournaments. I want to give her every opportunity to do well," she adds.

You never know, she could be the next Dipa Karmakar.

Is it possible to learn gymnastics as an adult?

Gymnastics is a sport of the young; between three and five is generally deemed to be the perfect age to start. But that doesn't mean you can't learn the sport as an adult. There are several dedicated centres in the West that offer to teach 20-, 30-year-olds or older as a fun activity to gain flexibility, strength and balance. It takes longer, of course, or would be easier if you are fit and play some kind of sport, or have learnt gymnastics as a child.

Does a small build make a better gymnast?

It is generally considered that those with smaller frames make for better gymnasts, giving an advantage to Asians or say petite-bodied Russians. But coaches say that this isn't necessarily the case. Strength, speed and flexibility is what makes a good gymnast, and all three traits have to be well-developed.

In fact, the new scoring, which came into effect at the 2014 London Olympic Games, too reflects this. "Earlier there used to be 10 points from which deductions were made for difficulty of the routine and its execution," points out award-winning gymnastics coach Harish Parab. "But the International Federation of Gymnastics split that into 10 points for the difficulty of the routine and 10 points for execution," he says and adds that shorter gymnasts will do well in difficult routines but the taller ones fare better in execution.

Being flat-footed or knock-kneed is perhaps the only bodily disadvantage for a gymnast. If you are knock-kneed or have a flat foot, then you need to train specifically to avoid pressure on the knees when you land after a twist, vault or somersault.