International gymnastics expert Dowdell reveals blueprint to produce 'several Dipa Karmakars'

MUMBAI: A margin as fine as 0.15 points is what separated Dipa Karmakar from a historic Olympic medal in the women's vault at the Rio Games in 2016. What the agony of her narrow miss did, however, was ignite interest in a sport in which India had never previously accomplished anything noteworthy on a global stage.

And while authorities here haven't quite managed to build on that interest over the years in the way one would have expected, that could be about to change.

A collaboration between Leap Gymnastics - an initiative of the JSW Group - and Kym Dowdell , a member and former vice-president of the International Gymnastics Federation Technical Committee, seeks to take the sport to a wider base of Indians through a robust competitive framework that's in the early stages of being put into place. The bigger goal? Develop a wider pool of athletes at the elite performance level to the extent where they are ready to compete at global championships, including the 2032 Olympics .

"Because we have such a broad base to choose from, there will be several Dipas in the programme that will emerge over time," Dowdell told TOI here on Friday. "It's always better to have lots of eggs in your basket and not just the one.

"And I think that is a little bit why we have no one representing India at the Olympic Games in Paris, because you had the one or two. You need to have a lot to come through the system," the Australian added, referring to the fact that no Indian gymnast has yet qualified for the Paris Games.

Pranati Nayak, who represented India at the Tokyo Games, and Karmakar have a final shot at making the Olympic cut at the Asian Championships to be held in Tashkent next month.

Dowdell, who has been on the international technical jury in gymnastics for nine Olympic Games and is gearing up for her 10th appearance in Paris, said the framework, which she has spent the last eight months working on, involves three phases.

"One is looking at the basic foundations of teaching gymnastics. Leap has introduced this in all their programmes and have a six-step curriculum for the foundations of gymnastics.

"Then, what we have just launched is what's called the compulsories programme and that's ensuring a programme of compulsory routines. That means all gymnasts across the state and the country can compete on equal footing. And it also enables them to develop the basic skills to move forward to the next part of the programme which is where they do routines of their own choosing.

"This final step is where they develop routines with high level skills in hope that one day some of them will be able to move towards a high performance area, for a world championships or an Olympic Games," Dowdell said, explaining that the framework is largely based on models she previously helped set up in top gymnastic countries with large participation bases like the United States, Canada, Great Britain and her home nation.

"We did use a lot of the experiences I've had with those countries, making sure we adapt it to suit the Indian environment and the Indian gymnasts coming through the system.

"In India, there's never been a systematic step by step programme towards performance. They've used only the two levels that exist under the international framework. This is where we actually have 10 steps towards high level gymnastics.

"By this system, by another year, we will have 1500 children across several centres who are coming through, and from that, in a five or six-year timeframe, we will be able to bring our own 10 athletes through the system and have 10 athletes competing at a very good international level," Dowdell, who also served as gymnastics director at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, added.

Under the direction of the Gymnastics Federation of India, Leap Gymnastics, having partnered with Maharashtra Amateur Gymnastics Association (MAGA), will launch the framework in the state, based on which it will then be rolled out across other parts of the country.

This will see Leap host the first club gymnastics championship in accordance with the new competition framework on May 11 and 12 at its Worli centre.