Badminton player Carolina Marín, Olympic champion, three-time world champion and seven-time European champion, was awarded this Wednesday with the 2024 Princess of Asturias Sports Award for her extraordinary record of achievements and for the values she transmits “on and off the court.” , like his spirit of overcoming injuries.
Marín (Huelva, 1993), who was able to end the Asian hegemony in this sport, was proclaimed Olympic champion in Rio 2016, and won the world title three times -2014, 2015 and 2018-, and with the European in seven, the last of them on April 14 in Saarbrücken (Germany).
Marín, whose candidacy was proposed by the general director of Casa Asia, Javier Parrondo, and who takes over for this award from the Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge, two-time Olympic marathon champion, already made history in 2014 by becoming the first non-Asian player in enter the badminton world cup top ten.
The jury has highlighted the “extraordinary record” of the player, whom it has praised as “an international reference” as she is the first and only non-Asian Olympic champion athlete in this discipline, as well as “the best player in the history of the badminton in Spain and one of the best in the world.
Added to these sporting merits, according to the jury, is that the player is “an example of improvement, a source of inspiration and transmitter of values, on and off the court.”
Speechless
Marín, who received the news when he was training, has said he feels that he has no words for the distinction and has admitted that heHe dreamed of the award “for a long time” considering that it is “a very nice way” to recognize his sporting career “for all the work, effort, dedication and those great goals and dreams he had.”
“I was training, I stopped and started crying,” said the Huelva native, who thanked her parents for giving her the opportunity to go to Madrid at the age of 14 and “fulfill the dream of a girl who was a little crazier.” than the others.”
Marín, who began practicing badminton at the age of eight at the IES La Orden Recreational Club in his hometown, has had an endless series of successes since the beginning.
In 2013 she played with the Indian team Banga Beats from Bangalore (now Bengaluru Raptors) in the inaugural edition of the Indian Badminton League, one of the most important in the world, and became the first Spaniard to win a Badminton Grand Prix, the London Grand Prix Gold.
She was the first European to win two consecutive world titles (2014 and 2015), and, after winning the 2018 World Cup, she became the first player in the world to win three titles in this competition.
Spirit of overcoming
In 2021, a knee injury prevented Marín from competing in the 2020 Tokyo Games, but in 2022 she returned to the slopes and won her sixth European title, and that ability to improve last year allowed her to get back on the World Cup podium as runner-up. .
At 30 years old, she can be considered a master in the art of resurrection, since last year she fell in the final of the World Cup and this year she is winning tournaments as prestigious as the All England on the way to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
In 2019 he completely broke his right knee, in July 2020 his father died and in 2021 he suffered the same injury to his left knee, something that prevented him from competing in the World Cup held at his home, in Huelva, at the Sports Palace. which bears her name, where she was happy proclaiming herself European champion in 2018.
The Sports award is the third of the eight awards held annually by the Princess of Asturias Foundation to fail, after this week the Franco-Iranian cartoonist, filmmaker and painter Marjane Satrapi was honored with the Communication and Humanities award, and the previous one Catalan singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat with the Arts.
Thus, the Social Sciences awards have yet to be decided, on May 15; Letters, on the 23rd of the same month; International Cooperation, 29; Scientific and Technical Research, on June 5, and finally Concordia, on June 12.
2024-05-09 21:52:22
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