3 min.
The badminton player Kristina Sotomayor, from CB Oviedo, has given birth to her son Samuel. The story could be one of many of sports mothers, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine gives it another look. Despite what it may seem from her surname, Sotomayor is Ukrainian and she had to leave her country in the final stretch of her pregnancy to Avilés.
Kristina Sotomayor left Lviv with her husband and her mother by car to Avilés. The Oviedo player has been playing in our league for several seasons and was ‘MVP’ of the 2020 Iberdrola Cup, among other awards.
“I want to continue, I’m not one of those people who think that everything ends with motherhood. I still have my talent and I want to continue developing as an athlete“, he says in statements to the website of the Spanish Badminton Federation.
Sotomayor looks back and tells how her experience was: “I remember that day, February 24, I was at home. We were sleeping and I woke up around 7, I looked at my mobile and in a group I have with colleagues from Ukraine I saw a message from a woman who said something like: ‘Don’t worry, everything will be fine, be calm'”.
“Already then I found out that they were bombing areas on the border with Russia and you could hear the noise of sirens everywhere. Before all this happened, my husband and I were living there, and We were thinking about whether or not to return to Spain, that’s when I got out of accounts and we decided to come here.“, keep going.
Sotomayor’s husband is Spanish and thanks to the help of the Spanish embassy in Ukraine they were able to leave more easily: “Especially when they organized a collection of money for us to start life again here, in which many people participated, I cannot explain how grateful I am to all the people who contributed their grain of sand”.
Even so, the volantista remembers that there are still many people in her country who need help and sport can be a way: “I think the best way to help people there is, for example, trying to help get minor children out of the countrytrying to provide them with temporary housing, or promoting activities in the facilities of a Club or CTD, if necessary, at least until the end of the stage they are experiencing”.
