Tokyo, the venue for the Badminton World Cup that began this Monday, brings back Carolina Marín’s worst memories. That’s where, a year ago, she should have competed to chase her second Olympic gold. She did not set foot on Japanese soil because she tore the cruciate ligament in her left knee two and a half months before the Games. While the opening ceremony was broadcast on TV, she cried on the physio stretcher. While her rivals stepped on the track, she clung to Paris 2024 to get out of the black hole. there, in that place damned, landed last Wednesday to seek his fourth World title. She has done it for the first time, accompanied by her psychologist, María Martínez, who never travels to the competitions. They have their talks by zoom. On this trip she has accompanied her. Because of her, as they say in her team, the emotional component of competing in Japan, the place where she was going to be the protagonist in the Games and she couldn’t due to a second serious injury.
Marín, 29 years old, debuts this Tuesday (starting at 7:35 against Canadian Wen Yu Zhang, number 71 in the ranking). She does it after three weeks of concentration in Sierra Nevada, after having fallen in the second round in the tournaments in Malaysia and Indonesia (June-July) and after winning, at the end of April, the sixth European Championship followed by her. At the end of that tournament, Fernando Rivas, her coach, said that Carolina was at 60-70% of her best version and that as soon as she improved physically… “watch out for her”. And now? Rivas answers from Tokyo and after having finished the last training session prior to her debut. “Now he is at the level of form of January 2020. We have done some tests before coming to Japan and they have been quite satisfactory: power, jumping, etc. From the point of view of strength, explosiveness and specific resistance, it is very good. And more with the concentration that we did [en altura] in the Sierra Nevada.
The January 2020 reference is not accidental. It was a year after the rupture of the cruciate ligament in his right knee, the pandemic tsunami and his father’s accident, for which he died a few months later. Marín had found his usual rhythm again: in December [de 2019] he won the International in Italy and China and in January he reached the final in Indonesia.
The World Cup will require her –physically and technically- much more than the European one, because the best rivals are the Asian ones. She knows it and her team knows it. They have already studied Marin very well. And her technique is the classic ass restless who is always looking for ways to innovate and improve the game. To surprise the rivals and also to spend less energy and take care of the Huelva’s body after two serious injuries and so many years in the elite. Rivas worked with Marín during the months before the European Championship on other ways of playing: with different angles and different speeds. “You don’t have to run so much on the track,” he explained. For this World Cup, says the coach, some technical elements of the mixed double have been included in the game. “To put a little pressure from the net, we are going to see how they work”.
In the European Championship in April, a much stronger back Marín was already seen: being a very offensive player, the physical trainer worked a lot on the back muscles of the scapulae. That’s it: for the steering wheel to turn quickly you have to accelerate the arm and for that you need good brakes and the musculature that slows down is that of the scapulae.
“I don’t want to pressure myself”
Marín, who in 2018 also reached the World Cup having lost in the first rounds of the two previous tournaments and then won the title, says she is happy to have the whole team with her. In addition to the psychologist and the technician, there is also Guillermo Sánchez, her physical trainer, and Carlos de Santos, the physio. “I have good feelings, the concentration in Sierra Nevada has gone very well, with very, very hard and quality training. I am happy with how they have gone, with how I have developed my game and with the mentality that I bring to this tournament”, says the Rio 2016 Olympic champion.
The objective? “We have proposed to get a medal, we have not said any color because I do not want to put pressure on myself. I just want to be focused on myself which has been perhaps what I have been missing in the tournaments in Indonesia and Malaysia”, she replies. That Asian tour, in which she was going to play four tournaments, was shortened to two. This is how Rivas explains it: “Caro was not yet one hundred percent, she continued to have discomfort in her knee and those things in the game that we were including were not yet settled. As long as the knee is fine, and now it is much better, the rest is just a matter of work”. And they work harder than anyone.
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