“For me today it is more important to enjoy. Life has given me another opportunity”

Carolina Marin (Huelva, 1993) is lying on the floor of one of the rooms of the Madrid High Performance Center. Outside, on the athletics track, they train bodies under a blazing sun that doesn’t seem to affect them. Marín, who just won her sixth European badminton championship two weeks ago, stretches her shoulders and legs under the supervision of her physiotherapist and his coach, Fernando Rivas. Minutes before, she has said goodbye to her psychologist. Among all they make a compact and perfectly oiled team, as seen in the Amazon Prime documentary dedicated to the athlete entitled ‘I can because I think I can’. These four chapters talk about the injuries that have affected his knees, his absence from the Tokyo Olympics, the death of his father five months after a work accident that occurred shortly before confinement, the pressure that lives an elite athlete.

Marín greets with a handshake and a certain coldness in the gesture. We have been told that he has 40 minutes for the talk and the photos. Immediately she relaxes and a very focused and also smiling woman appears, on whose mobile case Mickey and Minnie Mouse appear and the way they call her: “Caro”. A woman who acknowledges leading a different life from the rest, but who would not change for the world. A champion who no longer thinks only of winning. “I’ve worked a lot on it, now I want to enjoy it,” he says.

QUESTION. It’s always the same with you. She beats her rivals, wins championships and medals, they say she shines and is gifted. How do you keep all of that from being too overwhelming?

RESPONSE. It is true that when one begins to win, everyone’s expectations grow. That creates pressure on you, but you must control it; That’s why I’ve worked a lot on it. And, although I don’t create a bubble as such, I focus behind closed doors on my own, on the physical side with training and on the emotional side — fears, insecurities — with my psychologist. I have removed that level of demand because I want to win, of course, but for me today it is more important to enjoy myself. Because life has given me a second chance after two injuries and fortunately not only am I still playing, but I can compete. I am very grateful that people talk about me with such beautiful words. I think I am one of the few athletes who do not receive insults (smiles).

P. Recently, former gymnast Almudena Cid declared that she has found beauty in pain. You have experienced physical and emotional knee injuries following the death of your father. Do you feel identified with that phrase? How do you keep emotions from invading your concentration?

R. Let me tell you something. Are there high-level athletes who say they don’t train with pain? Honestly, I don’t believe that, because the medals are very nice and, when you get on the podium, it’s what everyone sees, but nobody knows what’s behind the doors, what you’re going through. There are family problems, absences, and physical discomfort, a body that suffers. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I can barely walk, but you have to keep training and working.

But it is also true that high-level athletes have a different pain tolerance, a higher ceiling than the rest. This has its good things, because we put up with a lot, but sometimes the discomfort translates into injuries. I have learned through head butts, and there comes a point where you manage it, because my 28-year-old body does not recover the same as when I was 25 or 20, far from it. In two years, I have had two very important injuries, you end up taking it in a different way, with more patience than you had before.

Q. Why badminton? It’s not exactly a mass sport…

R. I’ve been dancing flamenco since I was three years old, because in Huelva it was one of the things that was done the most. When I was eight years old, my friend Laura told me that she had learned about this sport and encouraged me to play in the sports center next to our house. Since I say yes to everything, I went with her. She was used to watching tennis, and I found those long rackets, plastic shuttlecocks instead of balls… It was all so weird and I was so competitive that I got hooked.

Because you don’t see how bad it was. You see a video of me as a child and it was impossible for someone to say that a champion would come out of that. That’s why I had to work on it and put a lot of hours into it. Perhaps my talent had more to do with my character, with not giving up.

P. When did the other talent appear, the sports one?

R. When I was 12 years old, they transferred me to the Huelva club and that’s when I had to leave flamenco, because I used to go out a lot to compete throughout Spain. And when I was 14 years old I came to Madrid. It was little by little, but based on a lot of effort.

Q. I am very interested in your relationship with your parents. In the documentary, they admit that they did not know what badminton was and her mother says that she had a hard time learning to write it. What would you say you have about one and the other?

A. Uff, a lot. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of them is the word ‘thank you’. My family situation was not the best. I am an only child, my parents had been separated for a short time and my father was having a very hard time because of it. When they told her about the opportunity for his daughter to come to train at the High Performance Center, she first said no, but after three seconds she called me to say yes. He had done that before, but in this case, that change of heart was much more difficult for him.

My mother told me a phrase that stuck with me and that I’m going to use when I have my own family: “Look, daughter, when it’s bad, you’re leaving. Is everything going well? Well, great. Isn’t it? The doors from home will always be open”. Huelva will always be waiting for me because, in addition, my family is there.

Fortunately, my parents finally gave in and I think that not everyone does. They are fighters, hard workers, from an average economy on the downside. My school was next to my house, but they could rarely come looking for me, it was my neighbors or friends who did it because they were always working.

Q. Today she is the best in a sport that is still a minority in Spain. What changes have you noticed in these years?

R. I remember how at first, if I got into a taxi to go to the airport or the train, as soon as they saw my racket bag, they asked me if I played tennis. Now that no longer happens and, in addition, I am recognized. I think that having popularized the word ‘badminton’ is already an important step that we have taken.

I noticed the main change with the Rio Olympics. Ella (she is the first non-Asian player to climb to the top of the podium and the gold medal was the first for Spanish badminton in a Games). They even told me that the net and flyers they sell at Decathlon were sold out, and I was very excited. Another important change is that sometimes I go out for a walk and I have found parents playing with their children. I have come to say hello and I have even played with them. I haven’t seen China yet, with people in their 80s practicing it. I would love to see that here. And the media is following up now, but look how much we’ve had to accomplish to get to that.

Spanish badminton regains the honor it lost in Japan… thanks to this newspaper

Kike Marín

P. Where does that scream you give while playing come from?

R. That’s how I am (smiles). It’s like who says good morning in the morning, come on. It is my character, the liberation that I need, the sign that shows the rival that I am there in front of me, that they feel me. I’m a wolf on the track, when I bite the neck I don’t let go. I want him to sit.

Q. The first time I heard about you was because of a headline that highlighted your achievements in sports and yet “you don’t have a boyfriend!”. How do you deal with such unfortunate comments?

R. The first thing I do when I read these things is laugh. I don’t have a boyfriend or maybe I do and you don’t know it because I don’t tell anyone about my personal life. It is better to ignore some things, although sometimes I have read things that have really pissed me off because I see it as very unfair. Am woman and athleteand.

Q. What things?

R. I remember a headline that made me very funny because it was totally invented. He said: “Carolina Marín is going to live with her boyfriend and her dog in a flat of I don’t know how many meters in the center of Madrid.” Look, he did have a dog, but I hadn’t gone to live with him, and with all due respect, I wouldn’t live in the center of Madrid because I like the outskirts better, the tranquility.

Also last year, taking advantage of one of the free weekends I had, I went to Ibiza. They did a report on me from a boat, without me realizing it, and they titled that I was with friends and with my boyfriend. Impossible because she didn’t have a boyfriend. you have to laugh

P. I confess that, when I started to see ‘I can because I think I can’, it made me want to strangle his coach. Luckily it happened to me at the end.

R. They say it to me a lot, and to him too (laughs). It is true that in the documentary you can see the hard part of Fernando, but it is one of the things that we wanted to show.

P. You recognize that they have very fat ballplayers.

R. Ours has not been easy, but we have been working together for more than 15 years, this is more than a marriage. He is a tough person and it is difficult to be by his side and endure, but precisely if it were not for that I would not have achieved what I have achieved. We understand each other, we have quarrels, sometimes we disagree, but we always communicate. And he has run out of many summers to be here with me so I wouldn’t get scattered. Realize that, when I arrived in Madrid, the people who trained with me were twice my age. Since they were people who were about to retire, they would go out to dinner, party… He didn’t want me to leave for that bad life. Like what he wants, I want it too, we both work to get it.

Q. What do you like to do when they let you be a normal person?

R. I am an athlete 24 hours a day, but, once I walk out that door, I am a very cheerful girl, I love being with my friends, my family, laughing, and being a bit crazy. But behind closed doors I am serious, concentrated, I am very involved in my own thing. In any case, I am a person who laughs and cries, like everyone else.

Q. When is the last time you cried?

R. Recently, two weeks, during the European championship. Nobody knew it, but it was suffering.

Q. After that victory, what is your next challenge?

A. In June we go all month to play tournaments in Indonesia and Malaysia, and in July we will go to Sierra Nevada to train for three weeks to prepare for the World Cup in August in Japan.

Q. How do you see yourself in 10 years? Will he have managed to disengage from this sport?

R. I am what I am thanks to badminton and sport, so I would not be able to disassociate myself. But the day I hang up the racket I know I’ll need some time for myself to enjoy myself that I haven’t had in the 20 years I’ve been in this. For example, a sabbatical year to travel a lot and get to know places, because the only thing I know are airports, hotels and pavilions, nothing about the countries themselves. And I would also like to help children who want to dedicate themselves to this, to show them the way, to tell them that it is possible. But we have to guide them because we know that there is a complicated age, in which they have to decide between sports or studies, friends and partying, which is normal. Though I wouldn’t trade my life for that of a normal person.