The 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.
Marín (Huelva, 1993) was proclaimed Olympic champion in Rio 2016, and won the world title three times -2014, 2015 and 2018-, and with the European title seven times, the last of them last April in Germany .
Missed from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics due to a knee injury, her record also includes the gold medal she won at the European Games held in Poland last year.
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, made history in 2014 by becoming the first non-Asian player to enter in 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.”
Onset at 12 years
Marín began practicing badminton at the age of eight at the IES La Orden Recreational Club in her hometown and, after achieving several victories at the regional level and several Spanish champion titles, she was selected at the age of fourteen to enter the High Performance Center. of the Higher Sports Council in Madrid.
The first European to win two consecutive world titles (2014 and 2015), Marín became, after winning the 2018 World Cup, the first player in the world to win three titles in this competition.
She achieved her first international successes in lower categories: In 2009 she was the first Spaniard to win a medal in the European Championships – silver in the European Junior Championships and gold in the European Under-17 Championships -, in 2011 she was proclaimed European champion. youth and the following year he participated in the London Olympic Games and won bronze in the Junior World Cup.
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.
First world cup
In 2014, she became European champion in April and world champion in August, becoming the third European player to win World Cup gold, after the Danish Lene Køppen (1977) and Camilla Martin (1999), and, furthermore, with Twenty-one years old, she was the youngest of the three to achieve it.
In March 2015 he won his first Premier Superseries title, the All England, which allowed him to rise to fourth place in the international ranking.
Her subsequent victories at the Malaysian and Australian Opens made her number one, something a European has not achieved since 2010.
In August 2015, at the World Championships in Jakarta (Indonesia), she retained her world title, a double that only four Chinese players had previously achieved: Li Lingwei (1983 and 1989), Han Aiping (1985 and 1987), Ye Zhaoying (1995-1997) and Xie Xingfang (2005 and 2006).
Gold in Rio
The following year she was once again proclaimed European champion and achieved her first Olympic champion title by winning the gold medal at the Rio Games.
In 2017, 2018 and 2021 he added three new continental championships to his record, in addition to his third world title in 2018.
In 2021, a knee injury prevented Marín from competing in the 2020 Tokyo Games, but in 2022 he returned to the courts and won his sixth European title.
In 2023 she achieved second place in the world championship and the gold medal at the European Games held in Poland and this same year she achieved her second title at the prestigious All England Open and her seventh European champion title.
The Huelva native has received, among other honors, the Bronze Medal (2014) and Gold Medal (2016) from the Royal Order of Sports Merit, the Queen Letizia National Sports Award for the best Spanish athlete of the year (2014), the for the Best Spanish Athlete of the Spanish Olympic Committee (2015) and Best World Player of the International Badminton Federation (2015).
The jury’s reasons
The jury of the Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2024, which has distinguished badminton juror Carolina Marín, has highlighted the “extraordinary record” of the Olympic champion, three-time world champion and seven-time European champion, but also the values that she transmits ” on and off the track.
The minutes, which were read this afternoon in Oviedo by the president of the jury, the swimmer Teresa Perales, highlights that Marín has been “an international reference” as she is the first and only non-Asian Olympic champion athlete in this discipline, in addition to “the best player in the history of 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.”
Marín, whose candidacy was proposed by the general director of Casa Asia, Javier Parrondo, takes over from Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge. The Princess of Asturias Sports Award is intended to distinguish “the trajectories that, through the promotion, development and improvement of sport and its social dimension, have become an example of the possibilities that sports practice entails for the benefit of Humans”.
2024-05-08 11:43:21
#Badminton #player #Carolina #Marín #Princess #Asturias #Sports #Award
