The Olympic and world badminton champion, Carolina Marín, highlighted this Thursday in Ceuta that she will continue to “fight” to fulfill her “dream” of being in the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 and get “another Olympic gold medal”, after overcoming the serious knee injury suffered in May 2021.
In statements to journalists in the city, where she has gone today to be present at the “Gala del Deporte” that is being held tonight, Carolina Marín (Huelva, 1993) has made it clear that “if I did not have the strength after this second injury I would have withdrawn the moment I knew I had broken my knee.”
The Olympic champion has highlighted that she is “very stubborn” and that “when I set my mind to something in my life I want to fight and work to try to achieve it but it is clear that today nobody gives anything away, the rivals are very strong and the game is badminton has also changed a lot in this period that I have been away from high competition”.
For this reason, Carolina Marín has been clear when commenting that “what keeps me going is wanting to get another Olympic gold medal, if it hadn’t been for that it would have been very difficult to get up from that second injury.”
The woman from Huelva missed the Tokyo Olympics after suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament and both menisci in her left knee after reaching gold at the Rio de Janeiro’16 Olympic Games.
“The important thing is to return to the mental level that I had before because when you break a knee or have surgery on something it is impossible to be physically the same because there is always daily pain, which one has to accept because there is no other, but I feel lucky now that allows me to continue training and competing at a high level, with which I hit my teeth with an edge”, he reflected on the injury.
The six-time European champion and three-time world champion has assured that she is currently in the preparation phase for next year’s competitions, which will start in January.
“On January 1, I’m going to Malaysia and I’ll be competing there all month, in India and Indonesia, so I’m in a moment of preparation for that year. My most immediate objective may be in March when we have the All England that it’s like a Winblendon for us since it’s the highest category tournament I have”, he said.
However, he will face other tournaments beforehand “since the first tournament of the year is a kind of Grand Slam because it is a Master 1,000 in Malaysia, but there is a very demanding calendar throughout the year and there are certain peaks in form because it is impossible to be 100 percent all the time.”
In relation to the advancement of national badminton, she has confessed that “you have to enjoy what they do because I have been doing it since I was 8 years old and I am sure that if they set their mind to something, work and fight for it, I am sure they will achieve it”.
He added that he had been “delaying” his visit to the city “for many years” but both my team and I have decided that it was the year to come, José Ramón López Díaz-Flor (director of the Joaquín Blume Residence) had told me many times and I’m happy to attend this gala”.
