This evening India’s Dipa Karmakar will attempt to win gold at the vault finals in Rio.
By now, Dipa’s remarkable story and the reasons behind her becoming one of the world’s best at the death-defying Produnova vault are familiar to most. We know that when it comes to the 23-year-old, the vault with the highest difficulty rating (7) is one that she knows best, one that she has practiced thousands of times. But whether she will stick to it in the finals is the question on everyone’s minds.
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The vault finals involve two vaults performed by each of the finalists in quick succession. The two have to be from different ‘vault families’ – that is, they have to have some key points of difference. In the qualifiers, for instance, Dipa performed the Produnova, following it up with a Tsukahara.
Information on the two vaults that the gymnast will be performing are usually given to the panel of judges in advance. Each vault has a difficulty rating that is officially assigned to it by the Federation Internationale de Gymnastics (FIG). A gymnast is given the full difficulty score on attempting the vault. This means that Dipa, when she decides to perform the Produnova, is going to be awarded 7 points for difficulty.
What is uncertain and incidental is how many points she will win for execution. The marks for execution are given out of ten. Each gymnast, unless she lands on a body part that is not her feet, starts out with an execution score of 10. The judges then subtract marks from the total for small flaws like a hop during landing, bending of a knee, falling off the mat or hesitation during the vault routine. Dipa’s execution score has rarely dipped below 8. Gold medal favourite Simone Biles’s execution score rarely goes below 9.7.
Gymnasts usually develop their two best vaults for years and chances of breaking with tradition to introduce a new vault on the night of a final are very few for Dipa. The Produnova gives her the edge pointwise in a sport that has begun valuing the skills associated with the vault more than the perceived beauty of it. The idea, also, is to showcase your mettle in two vastly different skill structures through the two vaults.
A front handspring launch into the air followed by two-and-half saltos off (the Produnova) would look as different as possible than a half-turn off the pringboard on to the vault table followed by a backwards push leading to a back salto or a layout (the Tsukahara).
Almost every gymnast among the finalists of the vault have their own staple combinations. Biles is one of the best in the world at the Amanar and Cheng vaults. However, there are chances that Dipa will introduce minor variations in her vault routine – the kind befitting the first Olympic final that will see an Indian gymnast.
