The goose feather shuttlecock flies from racket to racket on the court of the Blume Residence pavilion in Madrid. On one side of the net, Carolina Marin (Hueva, 1993) handles her tool as if she were wielding a scalpel; on the other side, two men, members of the national team, try to push her to the limit of exhaustion without succeeding in making her the one who ends up putting them in unsolvable difficulties. After the session, she receives visitors in the gym next to the court, which is equivalent to the living room of her house. After breaking both knees and missing the Tokyo Games, the most esoteric champion in the history of Spanish sport is back in top form to try to take on gold in the badminton championship that begins on the 27th at the Paris Games.
Ask. You project the image of a steamroller.
Answer. Well, I’m glad! That’s what I’m trying to do.
P. Was he born that way or is that aggressiveness a fabrication?
R. I think it’s something I’m born with. One of the most important things in my life has been to enjoy what I do. The first time I played badminton, I came back from the gym and my parents asked me: “Where have you been, ‘Carito’?” “I’ve just come back from playing badminton with my friend Laura.” “What’s that?” I then explained it to them.
P. What did you like about badminton?
R. The oddity. I’ve never seen it on television.
P. Did you like it because it was a sport of precision, of strength…?
R. At first, all you see is that you have to hit a shuttlecock to get it to the other side of the net. Imagine! I was very bad! It was impossible to say that a champion of Spain, Europe and the world would come out of that. Whoever says that is lying. All of this has been based on a lot of work. Nobody has given me anything, neither in sport nor in life. I chose what I chose since I was little. I was fortunate that my parents never said “no” to anything. They even gave me the opportunity at 14, when they proposed bringing me to the CAR in Madrid, to allow me to do so.
P. There are athletes who experience separation from their family as a very hard trauma. Iniesta still remembers it with sadness. Didn’t you suffer from the distance?
R. Yes. But I felt that if I let a year go by, maybe other girls would come and forget about me. I begged my parents to let me. The situation was complicated because I was an only child, my parents had been separated for a year, and I had absolutely no one in Madrid. But there was one thing that reassured me and convinced me. When my mother told me: “Look, Carito, the doors of your house will always be open to you.” Why not accept the option if I have the possibility of returning if I don’t like it?
P. He left his home, his family and his friends for an impossible sport, one in which Spain could not compete. What was the point of all this in his head?
R. I had a dream. When I was 15, two months after arriving in Madrid, I went into the coach’s office and told him: “I want to be the best at everything.” And I told him in Andalusian: “in all! I want to be number one in the world, European champion, world champion and Olympic champion.
You try to impose your plan. That’s why I train against two guys at the same time. Because that way they are more rested than me on the court and I accumulate fatigue and get used to stronger rivals.
P. But what were the real chances?
R. Well, I had nothing to lose. I just had to win.
P. Why does he hold the racket with his fingertips as if it were going to break?
R. I hold the racket very low. I try to keep my fingers very loose to gain mobility in the wrist and forearm. That allows you to change and improvise when you hit and be more unpredictable. That’s my philosophy. I’m not as skilled with the racket as Chinese women are, who seem to be born with a racket under their arm. I’ve had to work on it a lot: loosening my fingers, not squeezing certain fingers to loosen them up and have them softer on certain hits. It seems natural, but I’m still working on it today.
P. Badminton is deceptive. It seems like a slow game until everything is going so fast that you can’t get anywhere.
R. This is the fastest racket sport there is. It takes place in thousandths of a second. You don’t have time here. Compared to tennis, badminton hardly allows you to make decisions or rest. At the 2013 World Cup, I lost a quarterfinal after being 15-15: I lost the match in 20 seconds. I lost concentration and they scored 21-15 in 20 seconds. In thousandths of a second, you have to change, analyse where your opponent is, what they are doing to you, what they are doing to you, what you want.
P. Your half of the court is about 11×12 metres but you have to constantly run from the net to the backcourt. Is the defensive shot moving backwards the most difficult?
R. There is no joint that doesn’t suffer. In fact, my knees were the best thing I had until I broke my first one in 2019. And I had never had any discomfort. Nothing! I had had bursitis in my ankles and shoulders, problems with my sacrum… and in 2019 I broke my first knee and in 2020 the second.
P. How do you cope with the pain when the stitches stretch and the oxygen in your blood runs out?
R. You try to impose your plan. That’s why I train against two boys at the same time. Because they are more rested than me on the court and I accumulate fatigue and get used to stronger rivals. When we are under a lot of pressure at the back, the girls don’t have much strength to get to the back of the court, but the boys do. A boy’s attack is never the same: first because they jump. There are very few on the circuit who jump.
P. Your coach says that since you got injured you have to learn to run less and think more. Does that mean you can anticipate your rivals?
R. It’s about provoking things so that the head thinks more than the body works. I’m also very proactive. I don’t wait to see what happens on the court. I can’t play like that. Many players are more defensive: they prolong the plays until the opponent makes a mistake. After the injury I have adapted to that type of game because I see that before most of the plays lasted 8-15 hits and now they exceed 15 and sometimes they last up to 40.
“I try to show that: that I am overwhelming. You work on body language, your gaze… You work on maintaining a good expression despite being tired. The plays are long and I am exhausted, but so is my opponent and I cannot show them even a point of weakness because they can grab onto it.”
P. Because?
R. Because the players have improved in defence. Many of them wait and provoke the opponent’s mistake. I have had to train that patience because I am the least patient. The two injuries have strengthened my character in that sense: I am a person who wants things now. But things don’t work like that. I have learned to say: “I have to accept that I am going to make long plays, that I can’t take any chances.” Because my game is aggressive, with a lot of risk. When you attack you risk the midfielder not going in, or making a mistake and many of them wait for me to make that mistake. I have had to accept the long play to wait for them to make mistakes too. Where before I would win a point with one attack, now I might have to make five attacks.
P. For your physique, is it better to prolong or risk it?
R. It’s better to take risks, but if I take risks I’m always going to end up failing and it’s not worth it. I’ve worked on my physique to adapt to long plays because sometimes my rivals impose it on me. What’s most important in me is speed and explosiveness. I haven’t lost that. But I’ve worked on maintaining it because I’m playing with players eight or nine years younger.
P. But he continues to win the games by force and power…
R. I keep winning games because I focus on my strategies. If I focus on not losing, I lose.
P. Have you studied them? Is it important to know the character of each of your opponents?
R. Of course. But the most important thing is to know the weak and strong points on the court. We have played against all of them many times. We know each other perfectly. You know what they will do to you, what they want to provoke you to do, and how they want to beat you. The small details make the difference.
P. His shouts at the Rio Games, marking his territory with each point won, generated anxiety in his opponents. Is this psychological warfare?
R. In Rio I used the screams strategically. But after so many years they already know it. They already know me. They have studied me very well. There are ten cameras behind my matches. But in Rio the scream was part of the body language, of the look, of what I show on the court. For me that is very important. I try to show that: that I am overwhelming. Outside the arena I am a totally different person, but inside… There are certain things that you work on: you work on body language, the look… You work on maintaining a good expression despite the tiredness. The plays are long and I am exhausted, but so is she and I cannot show her even a point of weakness because they can grab onto it. This is like a rope that we both pull. Whoever pulls more is the one who is going to win. If I show weakness that is energy for her: the energy fluctuates on the court. I have noticed it many times. If one day the errors are affecting me more, I know that I am giving energy to the rival. I work so that if my rival takes my energy it is because he earns it, not because I give it away.
P. Is there a mentality of the poor, of the worker who cannot stop working?
R. My family is economically middle-class, but not very economically. I learned a lot from my grandmother: she had to raise four children on her own, and at 72 she was still cleaning houses. What I have learned is not based on theory. It is based on practice, on beating yourself up, on overcoming. Life has not made it easy for me. I have not wanted to give up. I have wanted to continue.
After two broken knees, you are so deep in a black hole that you need to see some light somewhere. That light for me is the medal in Paris.
P. He kept telling himself that he had to reach the goal: Paris, Paris, Paris… Is Olympic gold that important to your life?
RIt’s a motivation. A dream. You’re so deep in such a black hole that you need to see some light somewhere. That light for me is the medal.
P. Isn’t that putting too much pressure on you?
R. I am the one who puts the most pressure on myself. But it all depends on how I approach it. I don’t want to obsess. I focus on getting there, not on the end of the road. I know that if I climb step by step, I have a good chance of achieving my big dream.
P. Doesn’t it scare you that you have built your character, your life, for something so fleeting?
R. I have had to forge it. But I am a very sensitive person. Behind closed doors in the gym I am strong, I try to show that I am a rock. Outside the gym I am very sensitive. But the athlete who is bothered by fear and daily discipline is not a good competitor, he is a good athlete. coach. Coach It is the athlete who trains for ten and twenty points, but then is not able to compete well.
P. Are you worried about what lies beyond Paris?
R. Of course. You need to have something in your mind. Your mind can’t be empty in the future because I think you could fall into depression. But now I’m focusing on the Games. Once they’re over, we’ll see. I can be calm with myself for having given everything, for recovering, for coming back, for continuing to enjoy myself on the track, which is not easy. Then we’ll see.
P. When you strike certain blows, when you see that a window opens and your opponent is out of position, you have a ruthless gesture…
R. I’m a wolf on the track. When I bite, I try not to let go. I keep my jaw clenched. That’s me.
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