MADRID, 27 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Carolina Marín, from Huelva, showed herself this Monday “with desire” and “excitement” and “with more strength”, after her viral process, to compete in the Madrid Spain Masters, the eighth round of the HSBC World Tour of Badminton and which has been held since this Tuesday at the Gallur Municipal Sports Center in Madrid, with the current European champion “at the top of the world ‘top'”.
“I am much better, I have gone through an important viral process, I retired from All England, I did not go to Switzerland. I still have a cough and runny nose, but we have remedied the fever, the body sensations as well, I am stronger,” said the player badminton at an event organized by Iberdrola, led by Carolina Iglesias, the day before the start of the competition in Gallur.
A feverish process caused the Huelva’s withdrawal from the All England two weeks ago and her absence at the Swiss Open last week. However, she Marín does not want to miss the “special” appointment in the same venue where she was proclaimed European champion for the sixth time a year ago. “I compete here very little. That people come to see me makes me feel proud. There will be many ‘top’ players in the world,” she said.
“It’s going to be a beautiful week, the arena is going to be full. I’m looking forward to it, more than nervous. It’s been a year since I competed here, the first tournament after the knee injury. Competing in Spain makes me very excited”, He added about a tournament that will take place from this Friday until Sunday, April 2, and in which the Onuense, number one seed, will debut against the Danish Line Hojmark.
The woman from Huelva achieved her sixth European Championship at the end of April 2022 also in Gallur, where she expects very similar conditions. “The pavilion is the same as the European one, the stands are further away than normal, but this is getting used to, controlling the steering wheel well,” he said on the track.
Despite coming back in style a little less than a year ago, it was “since December” when Marín felt that she could “cope” with the best players on the world circuit. “I have spent a year and a half quite complicated, I was in pain and it has been frustrating, especially the mental part,” she confessed.
“I had no choice but to accept that pain that I did not want to have, I am very demanding and it was frustrating. We have touched everything possible and finally I have no pain. Now I enjoy badminton much more, I endure the training loads and I feel that I am in the right place. highest of the world ‘top'”, he added about his current physical and mental state.
The Olympic champion in Rio 2016 acknowledged that “sometimes” she doubted herself, “especially” when she returned from her two serious injuries. “You doubt yourself, the process, you wonder if you will show a high level again, it is complicated. You never know if you are going to be competitive again,” she said, although she celebrated that she is still competitive, already “bearing in mind the objective of the Games” of Paris 2024, an event that he is already looking at “with enthusiasm, desire and motivation”.
“It has been a different (Olympic) cycle, I got motivated (after his injury prior to Tokyo 2020), because it was not such a long cycle. It has been three years and time has passed very quickly, there is only less than a year left and means to be in other Games”, he applauded.
Precisely, he recalled the “very special” gold that he won in Brazil, “the dream that any athlete has in a big way.” “I was very prepared and with a very clear objective, I was the only one who in the previous press conference said that I was going to win the gold medal. I was going to what I was going, to win that gold medal. I visualized important moments, doubts, fears, because we have emotions and we are not aliens,” he explained.
Finally, he addressed his role as a “reference” for badminton in Spain. “For me it is a pride,” she admitted. “It’s an illusion, many times you have to be more careful with the things you do in front of the public,” she added, recounting that “sometimes you have to give up many things” as an elite athlete.
“I would like to go to a party or drink sparkling water, but I had to say no because the next day I have training. I have sacrificed things, but I feel very lucky, because I have seen that sacrifice rewarded”, she stressed, highlighting the support from his parents in all his decisions, despite the fact that badminton “has never been anything in Spain”.