At 22, Dipa Karmakar is one of five women in the world to have landed the extremely difficult and dangerous Produnova vault. (Or if you want to be really metal about it, you can refer to it as the "vault of death.") And the BBC reports in a moving video that as of this week, Karmakar is the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Olympic Games.
In 2014, she won the bronze medal in 2014 at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, a win she says changed her life because it put her on the international stage. Now she's become something of a celebrity in her hometown of Tripura, where she's often asked for her autograph and to be in pictures. "People treat me like a Bollywood star," she says in the video.
Karmakar is also the first Indian gymnast of any gender to qualify for the Olympics in 52 years. So the adoration from her community — and the rest of us — is definitely both well-deserved and long-awaited. See more of her inspiring story in the full clip below.
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