Rio Olympics: Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar nearly medals, inspires world – CBSSports.com

The gymnastics venue has been home to some of the most incredible performances of the Olympics. It has also been home to plenty of inspiring stories, perhaps none more than 23-year-old gymnast Dipa Karmakar.

She already made history as the first ever female gymnast from India to qualify for the Olympics, overcoming long odds to even reach this level of her sport. On Sunday, she very nearly became India’s first Olympic medalist as well.

Karmakar competed in the vault final after qualifying in eighth place by executing the “Produnova vault” which is also referred to as the “vault of death.”

It is considered one of the most difficult vaults to execute and is quite dangerous, with a front hand spring followed by two somersaults. Karmakar is one of only five gymnasts to have ever successfully landed it.

Karmakar went for it on her second vault of the final. Despite landing in a bit of crouch, she still stuck the landing and scored 15.266. That helped push her two-vault average to 15.066.

That put Karmakar dangerously close to a medal, but Switzerland’s Giulia Steingruber edged her by a margin of 0.15 to claim the bronze – a first women’s gymnastics medal for Switzerland. American Simone Biles, of course, won gold in the vent that she’s made her own, while Russian Maria Paseka took silver.

However, it’s Karmakar’s story that has resonated with Olympic fans around the world and should continue to. Her even being in Rio de Janeiro at all is incredible. She had to fight off not qualifying at the world championships to win a test event that secured her spot in the 2016 Summer Games. But the adversity she faced prior to that had her well prepared for whatever was ahead of her.

Gymnastics is not a popular sport in India, which made it rather difficult for Karmakar to train. Her coach, Bisweshwar Nandi, had to fund his own training facility and could not afford elaborate training equipment. Here’s how his gym’s vault was described by Reuters in a piece leading up to the Olympics:

With no apparatus or money available, Nandi utilized his own DIY skills to build some apparatus for Karmakar when she first started out. That involved constructing a springboard from second-hand parts of a discarded scooter and stacking several crash mats on top of each other to make a vault.

From a make-shift vault to fourth place on the biggest stage in the world on the apparatus? Unbelievable.

Karmakar has made her country proud, even without a medal. There was a massive outpouring of pride (here’s just a small sampling):

She’s not only broken stereotypes, she’s shattered them and overcome long odds to prove that she belongs among the best in the world.