163 minutes. It’s the time that passed since Carolina Marín’s cell phone began to smoke this Wednesday morning until she gave, with an excited voice, the first speech as the Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2024. It was 10:55 in the morning when her mother, who knows that ‘Caro’ does not usually pick up the phone because it is always on silent, insisted on Whatsapp to her daughter to alert her that she was going to receive an important call and that, Even though training is sacred to her, she had to pick up the phone. It wasn’t even in Marín’s head that it was the day on which the Princess of Asturias Foundation failed the award in the Sports category: “No, no. I had no idea it was today. And much less that someone had presented my candidacy,” he explained with a laugh.
“I felt scared and then happy”, Marín said when explaining that his mother’s insistent messages made him feel the worst: “I thought something had happened to a family member.” However, she soon cleared her doubts. Upon reading to her mother that she did not reveal what her daughter was about to discover, Carolina called her mother, who, to the athlete’s surprise, decided to cancel the connection. She didn’t want the phone to be busy at 11:00, when her daughter was going to receive one of the most important calls of her sports career. “You are the Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2024”, heard Marín who, with the naturalness that characterizes him, explained: “Carlos called me and, as best I could, I thanked him, because I started crying.” He was referring to Carlos Hernández-Lahoz Ortiz, head of the Prize Winners and Nominations area of the Princess of Asturias Foundation, in charge of communicating to the winners the decision of the juries in each of the eight categories.
At that moment, two people appeared in his mind as his eyes blurred and processed what he had just heard: his father, to whom he had to say goodbye in July 2020 and his mother, with whom he maintains a close relationship even more so since the loss of his parent.. He hugged Guillermo Sánchez, his physical trainer, and with his trainer, Fernando Rivas, his guardian angels. With them she has worked tirelessly to be the only badminton player who has managed to return to the elite after breaking the Anterior Cruciate Ligament and the menisci in both of her knees. More so when the second injury came after losing her father after the hardest five months in Marín.
The first thing ‘Carito’, as they call her at home, did was call her mother: “They were seconds only because neither of them could stop crying,” she said. So they agreed to call each other again when the training was over so they could share it as they both deserved. Because If there is one sacred thing in Carolina’s life, it is concentration and discipline in her sessions. The second call, with prior notice, was to Ignacio Paramio, who handles the athlete’s communication. At 11:02 he received a message that said: “Helloo. Hey, I’ll call you now.” And so she did, it was Carolina Marín herself who told her that she had received the award: “Something just happened to me. I’m here crying,” she told him, infecting him with the initial shock that she herself had had. But when he revealed the news, Paramio replied: “Arrea. Congratulations!”
After asking ‘Guille’ for a few minutes to recover, He returned to training that was scheduled from 9:00 to 12:00. So it was. Not even the Princess of Asturias of Sports stopped a day of preparation for the Olympic champion in Rio to return to the top in Paris: “The silver medal doesn’t cross my mind, of course what I want to achieve and what I aspire to, after the injury prevented me from doing so in Tokyo, is gold,” he said without consideration.
Although at 12:00 he was scheduled to rush out to an event organized with one of his sponsors, Marín had to change his plans. Teresa Perales herself called the brand to explain that they needed the event to be canceled because Marín was going to attend to the media at the headquarters of the Higher Sports Council (CSD). Paramio and the press team of the Secretary of State for Sports got to work. At 12:18 they sent a note announcing that Marín would appear at 1:30 p.m. At that same time, Carolina ran home, nervous, to shower and get ready.. She even sent photos of several looks to get one of the images that will go down in the history of her career. Wearing a pink jacket, she appeared calmly at the CSD where she was already waiting for the Minister, Pilar Alegría, and the Secretary of State, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes.
Change of plans in the Ministry and CSD to support Marín
The minister, who attended at 9:00, when Carolina Marín’s training began, unaware of what was going to happen, attended the informative breakfast of the New Economy Forum with the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu. When she was informed about it, she headed to the Higher Sports Council, where she was received at 1:17 p.m. The same thing happened with José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, who was going to participate in the proclamation of Elisa Aguilar as president of the Spanish Basketball Federation that began at 12:30 p.m. in Alcobendas. However, the Secretary of State’s agenda was also modified. He caught everyone off guard. She did not hesitate for a second to go to a CSD, the home of Spanish sports, where Carolina Marín trains and had decided to pronounce her first words as the Princess of Asturias Sports Award winner. “I think they fined us something,” the press team joked when recounting how the morning had happened. The entourage headed to Martín Fierro Street in a hurry so that everything would be ready for the arrival of Marín, who was rushing to be ready for her big moment.
When he arrived at the CSD, at around 1:17 p.m., the Minister and the Secretary of State were waiting for him. She shared a few minutes with them in an office before entering the press room, amidst applause. It was exciting. Marín herself remembered in that private meeting what her arrival in Madrid was like. —something that she also remembered in her speech—, when she landed at only 14 years old and with a single goal: to become the best of all time in, then the most unknown in our country, badminton. The importance of his mother was also present in that talk: “Once he came to see me train at the CAR (High Performance Center), and when I realized he was on his back. He told me that he suffered a lot with the intensity and demand he had in each session, so he has only come rarely and when I did it, I didn’t even want to look,” recalled those closest to Carolina after her press conference.
At 1:38 p.m. she advanced steadily through the press room, escorted by Alegría and Uribes, whom she thanked for their presence. “I don’t know where to start, I don’t have enough words, but thanks to the jury for having thought of me and for choosing me as the winner, it is a dream. “Several years ago I talked about it with my mother and I dreamed of getting this award and it has come true,” he began, once again mentioning a proud Toñi Martín, who was in tears while attending various media outlets from her home in Huelva.
Three and a half minutes in which he left two keys: “This It is a recognition of my entire sporting career, of all the values of sacrifice, effort, dedication, resilience… We have overcome all the obstacles along the way and we have been fulfilling all the goals and dreams that I have set for myself,” she said confidently and smiling. And she left a glimpse of what her life has been like in recent years: “The first thing I ask of you What remains of 2024 is health, that it respects my body these two and a half months, that it allows me to train and enjoy this path until July 27 when I start competing. But for asking, we are going to ask for the gold medal,” she said with determination and joy. However, while the photographers were taking the first images of Marín as the winner, she could be heard saying to the minister: “The medals are very nice, but pass fast. Not people, they are the ones who stay,” she said.
The great premonition
Before starting their training on Wednesday, Marín’s most direct team – with Guille, Fernando and their physios – shared in his group whatsapp something that would be premonitory hours later. At 7:53 they were commenting on an interview by Javier Sánchez, a colleague from El Mundo, with Eliud Kipchoge, just until that moment, the 2023 Princess of Asturias Sports Award winner. Unaware of what would happen hours later, since his team did not have it in mind either. the radar that hours later the 2024 prize was failed, they valued the reflection that the Kenyan left: “working from pain”, something with which Carolina felt tremendously identified when beginning this last Olympic cycle with the break of her second crusader just before the Tokyo Olympics.
This is how the almost three hours, 163 minutes ended, which changed the fate of Carolina Marínthe best badminton player in history not born on the Asian continent—the cradle of this sport—who On October 25 at the Campoamor theater in Oviedo, she will receive the more than well-deserved Princess of Asturias Sports Award for 2024. An essential requirement is to attend the reception, so Fernando Rivas already knows that on those dates, when the French Open is held, in which Carolina usually participates, Marín will be in Asturias. “After the Olympic Games we will restructure his calendar,” his coach said smiling. With the same smile, joy, discipline and, above all, resilience, the Huelva native will arrive in Asturias. I hope she does it with the Olympic gold hanging around her neck. What she will never forget is this May 8, when finally, after years with her candidacy on the table, the jury decided that her career was worthy of the most prestigious international award given in our country.
Carolina Marín
Higher Sports Council
2024-05-10 00:10:23
#fined #Relief
