She fought.- The Senayan district, in Jakarta, breathes sport. And not just because these days the Basketball World Cup is being held there. It is an aroma that survives 365 days a year within the Gelora Bunk Karno, a multi-sports complex with baseball fields, tennis courts, a stadium with a capacity for 20,000 people or the brand new Indonesian Arena, where Spain is playing the first phases of the World Cup.
But above all these enclaves, the Istora Senayan stands out. A venue for more than 8,000 fans that has become the Maracana of badminton in a country where the sport of the shuttlecock is religion. A creed with numerous deities but on which a foreigner stands out: Carolina Marín. The woman from Huelva is an idol of the masses in the Asian country and you only need to go to this venue, sacred to badminton, to realize it.
We are approaching the Istora, but we cannot pass. These days it is occupied by exercises of the local police and by a private congress. However, at the door we meet Hawk who is in charge of guarding the entrances. He doesn’t speak English, but when we name Carolina does not hesitate to raise her thumb and nod with the head. First recognition test.
The Istora is closed these days to the public. But around him badminton continues to be the great protagonist. Dozens of practitioners surround the stadium with their rackets and feathers. They don’t need a network. And there the name of the Spanish player appears again. “He is a benchmark. What he has done is incredible,” says Indra, a girl who plays with her brothers at the gates of an enclosure with special meaning for Huelva.
It is surely the venue that has marked Carolina Marín’s career the most. For the good, but also for the bad. The Istora witnessed in 2015 the second World Cup triumph of the Spanish in a pavilion surrendered at his feet. It was the consecration of Huelva as a great world star. But there he also experienced one of his worst moments four years later, when he suffered his first cruciate ligament tear on his right knee.
However, Istora is much more for Carolina Marín, as she admits to Relevo a few days after her world silver medal: “Isora Senayan is very special for all badminton players for how this sport is lived in Indonesia. I have always compared it to the soccer ultras there in Spain. Well, there in a pavilion of 10,000 people are the ultras of badminton. They are screaming all the time, even encouraging foreign players. What is lived there is not lived anywhere else.”
The double world champion and Olympic gold medalist’s relationship with Indonesia has always been special, as she herself admits. “Jakarta is a joy for me, because competing there is like being in my second home,” says Carolina. “In Indonesia they have supported me before I started winning big titles. They have always given me a lot of love. I have many friendships with many players. They treat me great.”
“There is a hotel 5 minutes walk from the pavilion and I can’t walk because it could take up to an hour because there are always people asking for photos or autographs”
Carolina Marín
The Spanish player -who has just won a world silver medal that no one counted on after her injuries, making good her motto ‘I can because I think I can’- he is a kind of Cristiano or Messi when he is in Jakarta. “There is a hotel 5 minutes walk from the pavilion and I can’t walk because it could take up to an hour because there are always people asking for photos or autographs and I always end up asking for transportation,” says the Huelva native with a laugh.
That fame initially struck Carolina, who felt “a bit strange because I was not used to being stopped so much in my country and yet when I traveled to Indonesia they stopped me, they asked me for tons of photos, autographs… Until every time I went every year I normalized it more. But at first I was very impressed by the fact that they asked me for more photos and autographs as a girl from another country”. A foreign idol who is still very present in the Istora and its surroundings. The Maracana of badminton where Carolina continues to be a reference.
Passionate about basketball since he was a child, Guillermo García has managed to make the sport of the basket his profession. With a degree in Humanities from the Carlos III University and a Master’s in Journalism, he started working at Marca in 2003, where he had time to do everything from soccer to reports and opinion, going through the closing section. In 2011 he began as a writer on the official NBA website in Spanish and since then he has covered basketball information with special attention to what is happening in the US. In addition, he has covered two Eurobasket, one World Cup and two Olympic Games, along with a multitude NBA playoffs. But not only does the man live on basketball and he has also been able to interview figures from other sports such as Usain Bolt, Simone Biles or Armand Duplantis. …
2023-08-31 14:24:53
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