Dipa Karmakar scripted history on Sunday clinching India’s first-ever gold medal at the Asian Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The 30-year-old Olympian registered an average score of 13.566 in the women’s pole-vault final.
This is the first time that an Indian gymnast has won a gold medal in any event at the Asian Championships. Dipa’s already outstanding list of firsts for Indian gymnastics is enhanced by the vault
gold. She is the first female gymnast from India to compete in the Olympics, and at Rio 2016, she put on the best performance of any gymnast competing in the Summer Games, placing fourth in the women’s vault. She also became the first Indian to ever win a gold medal at an international gymnastics competition when she won the women’s vault gold medal at the 2018 FIG World Cup in Mersin, Turkey.