Bengali Girl Romina Gupta Vaults to Glory in US Gymnastics
Romina Gupta is only the second Indian-American woman who will represent the US in gymnastics. Athens Olympics silver medallist Mohini Bhardwaj was the first.
This has been a season of Indians making inroads in America's sporting culture. If the likes of Sim Bhullar and Satnam Singh have grabbed the spotlight in the world's top basketball league, the NBA, a 17-year-old Bengali girl, Romina Gupta, has created history by making the US national team for acrobatic gymnastics.
A Bengali gymnast in the US is certainly big news. For the Indian diaspora and their siblings to engage in school and college-level swimming, basketball, soccer, athletics or even tennis is nothing uncommon in the United States. But to make the national squad in any sport, where qualifying standards are extremely high, is nothing short of being special.
Internationally, Indians are little known for their prowess in gymnastics. So when 21-year-old Dipa Karmakar vaulted to a bronze medal in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Agartala girl made big headlines. Last year at Incheon Asian Games, Dipa finished fourth in her pet event and since then, she has been largely forgotten.
1998-born Romina lives in Silicon Valley with her Kolkata-born parents. Like most youngsters, she chose artistic gymnastics to start with. The colourful routines with props is the one women and the world love. It is also an Olympic event.
When Romina started visiting the gym from the age of four, there was no shortage of inspiration around her. Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson won multiple medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and four years later in London, US won the all-round title for the second time.
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Romina, of course, is not the first Indian to vault and balance for the US team. Mohini Bhardwaj was the first Indian-American gymnast to win an Olympic medal (a silver in Athens 2004). Mohini's mother was a Russia and a yoga teacher. So gymnastics was probably a natural choice for Mohini. Romina's mother went to Kolkata's Loreto House and St Xavier's College.
Another Indian did US proud in gymnastics. Artistic gymnast Stephen Raj Bhavsar represented the US in the 2001 and 2003 world championships and won silver medals. He went on to win a team bronze in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Romina switched to acrobatic gymnastics due to health reasons. It is not an Olympic event yet but it will be a key event at the 2016 world championships in China. Acrobatic gymnastics is a team event and popular in Russia. The routine involves vaulting, dancing and balancing on the floor.
"I really wanted to find some other competitive sport that I could do because I love sports and staying active. It's really important for me," Romina told Morgan Hill Times.
After winning medals for three consecutive years in the US nationals, Romina and her teammates got the break they dreamt of - a national call-up. It was the fruit of lot of frustration, hard work and of course, patience.
"Gymnastics is such an independent sport," Romina said. "It's all about yourself and it's not about communicating with others or anything like that. It's just you and your coach."
Romina remains a Bengali at heart. She may have chosen a sport where diet is extremely regimented, but Romina remains the typical luchi-aloor dum and puuchka-singara girl next door. She may be vaulting to glory for the US, but there will always be a large slice of Kolkata inside her.