After missing the first tournaments of the season due to the flu, Carolina Marín prepared her debut thoroughly. Her setting, the Arena Porte de La Chapelle, the stadium in which she will pursue her second Olympic gold, invited it. At the French Open, however, everything ended ahead of schedule: the Spaniard, who had traveled to Paris with her entire team to carry out a simulation for the Games, gave up in her debut. “It was a painful defeat, among other things, because we arrived well prepared, psyched and motivated,” explains the Huelva-born sports psychologist, María Martínez, in conversation with this newspaper. The coup was a new starting point. After the unexpected setback, the Spaniard triumphed again at the All England Open, ‘the Wimbledon of badminton’, nine years later and she continued her streak in Basel, where she won this Sunday.
Between the fall and the takeoff, two key figures emerged for Carolina. On the one hand, Mary herself; on the other, the main coach of the Olympic champion, Fernando Rivas. “It was difficult to assimilate why. I was lucky that I traveled with my psychologist and we worked on everything. I also had a very important conversation with Fernando and that was, she would say, a click, a turning point. I cried a lot. I learned hard things and learned,” the Huelva native revealed this Monday after the presentation of the Madrid Spain Masters, a tournament that begins this Tuesday in Gallur (on BWF TV) and in which she will not be present after the demands of recent weeks. “The main themes were to get rid of fears and insecurities. There was a fear that was quite hidden and it was the fear of failing myself. I had to scratch a little bit inside myself, open myself up along with the whole team. That was what made me change my focus for the following games,” she explained before a small group of media, including AS.
“She told me she was afraid of failing, but she was afraid of disappointing her and us.”
Fernando Rivas, about his talk with Carolina
Specifically, the talk between Carolina and Fernando Rivas took place after the Spanish debut in the All England. A match in which, despite the victory, the Olympic champion “had not done anything about the match plan”, as the coach reveals in conversation with this newspaper. “She told me that she was afraid of failing, but she had made 23 unforced errors. I told him that it couldn’t be that by doing something other than the game plan he wouldn’t be afraid of failing and that by following it, yes. We started to dig into that fear and, really, she wasn’t afraid of failing, but rather she was afraid of disappointing herself and the team. I told him that the truly disappointing thing was not trying to do what he had to do and that he didn’t have to show us anything,” says Rivas, who attributes the credit for his reflections to his own psychologist, Fany Barembaun.
In the conversation, Carolina’s coach, whom he confronted “with her demons,” also told the Huelva native that, for some time, “a victim scenario” had been built. “She has had very bad luck these years, but, as I told her, life gives nothing back and you have to play with the cards you are given. From my point of view, in this period of being a victim, in which he had had good streaks of play, but without winning big events, every time something unexpected happened, he clung to it to confirm that he was indeed a victim,” Rivas explains. “It is not a tasteful dish when you are confronted with your worst side. Especially when you give the image of a strong person. But, really, the fact of looking in the mirror, recognizing oneself, accepting oneself and forgiving oneself demonstrates much more strength than that complete shell that many people have to mask those fears.
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Carolina Marín cries with emotion after winning the All England Open.
The game plan and new confidence
Following that explosion of emotions, María Martínez got to work. “Tough defeats also allow us to get to know each other much more,” she explains. Broadly speaking, her work with Carolina consisted of rebuilding her trust and creating a protocol for mistakes. “What happened? Why have I taken it this way? What things have I not been able to implement?” were the questions, closely connected to the talk held with Rivas. “We had to understand that defeats can also come at a good time of preparation. We focus on following the game plan, which means keeping the goal in mind until the end and being able to evaluate whether we are on or off the path,” develops the sports psychologist, a fundamental piece in both this last “click” and in the recovery of the Olympic champion after tearing the cruciate ligament and menisci in her left knee.
“We had to understand that defeats can also come at a good time”
María Martínez, on psychological work
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Four months before the Paris Games, “in which many things can happen,” Fernando warns, the ordeal seems further away than ever. Since January 2021, before that injury that prevented her from being in the Tokyo Games, Carolina had not won two trophies in a row on the international circuit. With the victories in the All England and Basel, in addition, the Huelva native took a gigantic step towards one of her great objectives before the Games: arriving as the fourth seed, which would make the draw much easier for her. “This is the path we want to follow and that we want to travel. I have focused on continuing to work on the game, the mental part, and I hope that physically I continue to feel like I am feeling today,” Marín wishes. Her next challenge is the European Championships in Germany, from April 8 to 14, in which she will seek to be continental champion for the eighth time.
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2024-03-26 04:12:06
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