Vaults are my strength

Sabi Hussain

Dipa Karmakar knows her chances of winning a medal hinges largely on how she performs her favourite vault — the Produnova. She's working hard to perfect her moves and is pretty hopeful of winning a medal. Excerpts:  

How’s your training going on and what are the expectations from Rio?

I am working on perfecting my movements as you need good scores in two vaults to qualify for the finals. I am looking to improve my scores to around 15.78 points. Currently, I am touching 15.02, 15.03. I need more practice to get to the required mark. I will first look to qualify for the finals and then see how things pan out from there.

You are banking a lot on Produnova….

That's my strength. That's where I can get maximum points. There are only two-three woman gymnasts who try this vault. My scores are better than my competitors at the highest difficulty level of seven. Besides the Produnova, I am also working on the Tsukahara vault. A fine showing in these two vaults will brighten my chances of making the finals.  

But aren't you depending too much on Produnova?

If you look at the four events in the women's artistic gymnastics, I have been performing well in vaults. My scores have not been good in uneven bars, balance beam and floor. That's the reason why I am over-dependent on vaults. All my medals in international competitions have come from vaults. 

Where do you see the strongest challenge coming from?

The gymnasts from the USA, Russia, DPR Korea and Switzerland qualified for Rio from the World Championships in October last year. They finished as top-four finalists. I was fifth in the final ranking, so couldn't qualify. I qualified in April, so I have had comparatively much lesser time to prepare myself. But I am confident of reaching the medal round. 

Besides, the gymnasts who qualified from the World Championships did not come for the Test event in Rio, so I couldn't see how good they were. Let's see what happens, in gymnastics even a .001 difference counts.

When is your event?

I am leaving for Rio on July 30. My event is on August 7.