#wouldnt #experienced #father #worst #enemy #Relief
Only one player in the history of badminton has accumulated three World Cups. in his record. Curiously, in a traditionally asian sportthat athlete She has a Spanish name and surname: Carolina Marín.
His sporting aspirations have no limits. He works tirelessly. He wants to enjoy badminton until the last moment and seeks to continue making history. Although break both kneesjust before and after the pandemic, and losing his father after a tragic accident, He was always clear about what his main objective was: the Paris Olympics..
When it got harder, when everything seemed darker, Carolina learned to “take something positive out of negative situationsWhether it’s the pandemic, whether it’s an injury, whether it’s a family loss.” He knows that what happened to him is something that many people go through. An injury, a significant loss, emotional ups and downs… and that’s why He has been trying for years to have tools to deal with it and take care of his mental health.. “I always try to get something positive because if not that anxiety or discomfort would make me always disappointed in myself, I would remain depressed, I would never find that joy,” she says.
“If I were afraid I wouldn’t be playing badminton. To live in fear is not to live”
Carolina Marín
You know that no badminton player has broken both knees. He knows the “sacrifice and effort” that a return entails. You know that you have to work on a sporting level but also on an emotional level to be number one. And, above all, he knows that He doesn’t want to live in fear.: “If I was afraid, I wouldn’t be playing badminton. In the end, living in fear is not living., is living uneasily. And for me that is not health.”
Mental health, key in your career
Carolina came to Blume when she was 14 years old. She is now 29. He started working with a psychologist at 15. Many athletes did it and he has grown up understanding that that other job are fundamental as physical training. Take care of your mental health with special interest, consider the “very important emotional part” because she is already “a very emotional person”, dice.
“I have had a sports psychologist and a personal psychologist. There is no need to be bad, the idea is to want to be better”
Carolina Marín
So much so that at some stages of his life he has worked with two mental health professionals. “There have been times when I have had a sports psychologist and a personal psychologist, that is, I have had two psychologists.“, he says. And he breaks any stigma about mental health with absolute normality: “I have never considered that I am crazy or that I am wrong.“, sentences. He assures that lTherapy is addressed simply to “be better”. Something similar to the way in which he faces his sports career. He has an Olympic gold, three World Cups and six Europeans, but he wants more. The same thing happens with your emotional health: you don’t need any added difficulties to “try to be better.”
“The sports psychologist has helped me in my sports career, especially by facilitating techniques for adverse situations that I have had to face. Fears, insecurities, nerves, external pressure, and even internal pressure from me“, she explains. “Then there have been stages in which I have worked with a coach to get to know myself more on a personal level and finally I work with my psychologist to name those emotions I haveo“This is how Marín details how he has been evolving and using resources to take care of himself emotionally and psychologically.
Two breaks in two years
Carolina is the only badminton player to have broken both knees. Twice the anterior cruciate ligament and the last, with the two menisci. It happened to him when he was enjoying success, at the best moment of his career, and after overcoming it, he passed it again. Two months before the Tokyo Olympics. After two years with many difficulties.
“When I first got injured I didn’t even know at the time that I had broken my knee.. In fact, I wanted to continue playing,” she remembers. And she makes a revelation: “That was one of the few games in my life in which I came out sure that I was going to win it. That’s why I was so excited. And on top of that in Indonesia. A country that I love, where they love me very much. They didn’t stop encouraging me and that’s why I wanted to continue,” he says. “When I arrived here in Madrid and I went to the hospital, They told me the knee was broken. I didn’t believe it“, Explain.
Fortunately, it was “just” the crusader and in seven and a half months he was back on track. “I “Until I feel confident about my knee, I’m not going to play again.”said. So it was. Until she felt confident enough, she did not return. He did it in record time.
In 2021, Carolina was going through one of the worst moments of her life on a personal level. “External problems affect you when you have to train. You try to leave it outside the pavilion door, but it is impossible. Many times because it is day after day, problem after problem,” he shares. He broke his cruciate again.
“The second injury was more of a hell, a black hole seeing myself so close to the Olympic Games“, he says. “I was so well, both physically and mentally… There yes I knew the moment I had broken my knee because I heard the crack.I had external factors that weren’t helping me either, a lot of problems…” Carolina’s words and her way of telling it rreveal a tranquility typical of someone who knows that, despite the suffering they entail, Injuries are part of the life of an athlete high perfomance.
“When I got injured the second time, I thought Tokyo was not for me”
Carolina Marín
“How did I get out of that hell?” she wonders. “I thought Tokyo wasn’t for me. Because look, I’ve been through an injury, I’ve been through a pandemic, I’ve been through a pandemic in a hospital and then, shortly after, the loss of my dad. I’ve had a second injury… So I thought I had to console myself with the fact that for the next Olympic Games, as the Tokyo Olympics were delayed, there were only three years left.“.
Carolina had to rethink her career. “It is true that I I saw Tokyo as almost the end of my sporting life. But I’m very stubborn in that sense. So, Not achieving my goal in 2021, I wanted to extend it until 2024“.
Afraid of breaking again?
The risk of relapse of a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in athletes in disciplines in which jumping and pivoting are frequent and must be performed at maximum speed, is very high. 5% of athletes tear the ACL again and another 5% tear the other knee.
“If I was afraid of it happening again I wouldn’t be playing badminton. Al final, to live in fear is not to live, is living uneasily. And for me that is not health,” she says bluntly. “If something has to happen to me on a badminton court, it has to happen to me. Badminton has given me everything“.
“There comes a time when you do not control your self-demand and injuries occur”
Carolina Marín
Marin He knows that this risk increases due to the way he approaches each training session and each match with Fernando Rivas, his coach.. “Our demands always go beyond the limit. That is precisely a good thing, but also a bad thing. There comes a time when you do not control it and injuries occur or body pain,” he says.
“SIn that need to go further perhaps I would not have achieved everything I have achieved today,” she says, grateful for that way of living her career, of aspiring for more every day, of going to the limit, although she assures that He would have liked to “control that demand a little more so as not to have injured myself.”“for example, the knee,” he says, laughing.
His connection with demands has led him to also have to relate to self-control. Marín had to go one step further. She recognizes that she demands of herself “more than normal.” “Even in bad times or days when something doesn’t work out, I push myself harder instead of giving myself a little more love and having a little more patience.” She admits that His head is spinning so much that it is difficult for him to sleep. There is no respite. “Self-control is something I have had to work on a lot”.
“The moment I think about throwing in the towel, I’ll hang up my racket”
Carolina Marín
Living on the edge has its risk. To attend a Marín training is to attend a contest with herself. Speed up every steering wheel, every gesture, every effort and every emotion. It is permanently managed. But has she ever thought about throwing in the towel? “If she had done it, we wouldn’t be talking here for sure,” she says flatly. “The moment I think about throwing in the towel or that this is no longer worth it to me, that I no longer enjoy it or I no longer love it as much, I will hang up my racket.“.
The death of his father in 2020
Gonzalo Marín died in July 2020 as a result of the aftermath of a serious work accident suffered months before. It’s hard to listen to the Olympic champion talking about it with a unusual fortitude in someone who loses his father so soon and in such a tragic way.
“My dad’s accident It was totally unexpected.. I was coming from a tournament and that night I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. I was so tired. Suddenly there was a knock on the door of my room at La Blume to tell me to look at my cell phone, because Fernando, my coach, was calling me. “It was almost 00:00 at night,” he says.
“I had 15 missed calls from him, one from my cousin and one from my uncle. That threw me off. I talked to Fernando and he came here to the residence,” Carolina remembers. His coach already knew what had happened and he had gone to her house, but did not find her. When he managed to locate her, he told her what had happened.
“I didn’t believe it. At that moment what I did was take the car and go down to Huelva.” But Fernando prevented it and encouraged her to take the first plane the next day. That’s how she did it. When she arrived she, found the most difficult situation he had ever had to manage. The only child of separated parents, she took responsibility and decided to have her father operated on, despite the risk it entailed..
“After the accident, I was bitter. It was an ordeal. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy”
Carolina Marín
Carolina looks straight in the eyes and continues to explain in detail, sharing the hardest personal trance you have ever gone through: “My dad lasted five months and it was an ordeal. I was bitter, I didn’t want anyone to talk to me, I stayed in the hospital, in the midst of a pandemic… There were many hours in a situation that, on top of that, you don’t want, you don’t accept. I didn’t want my father to be like this, I didn’t want to go to a hospital and endure so many hours there. I do not wish it nor to my worst enemy“, he asserts. And the worst outcome came.
“It cost me my time”, Explain. Then her drive comes out, the courage and drive that accompanies her at every match point and that also makes her face life’s setbacks with extraordinary strength. “There are people who would have taken years to face this, but “Two months after his death I changed the chip.”he asserts.
“Without the tools and without that maturity that sport gives you, it would have been impossible. I have had to make decisions that a person without those resources would not have made. I already told you. I I was the one who decided to have surgery on my father and I was also the one who decided no more pills because my father was not going to get better and I wanted that hell to end for my dad.. “That decision was also made by me.”
Silence invades the badminton pavilion of the High Performance Center. Six empty courts as the all-time badminton champion recounts the greatest pain she has ever suffered. Carolina is excited as she lets go of the pain. It’s one more step in the work you’ve done to come to terms with what happened.
At the beginning of last year, Carolina Marín put her foot on the wall. She neither wanted nor could continue with that ordeal. “At the beginning of 2021As we were still in a pandemic, they organized one month in Thailand three tournaments in a row“he says. I needed to change the dynamic.”It was a change in mentality because the rivals realized that Carolina had already returned. I reached the three finals and won two of them“, he recalls while smiling.
“The rivals realized that Carolina had returned. I won two of three finals”
Carolina Marín
“It was quite brutal self-control, more than even that of the injury, but it is true that in a different way, because this was already something more personal. Having a sports and personal psychologist has helped me a lot to deal with these types of situations,” she insists.
“I can because I think I can”
Marín has been working for years with a motto that helps him persevere in the most difficult moments of the game, and amplifying it, of life: ‘I can because I think I can.’ “I was working in a session with my first psychologist and a similar phrase came out. It is true that over time I have given it my own form. At the Rio de Janeiro Olympics I had her very present during many difficult moments in certain games.
Beyond a motivational tool It has become his identity on and off the track. “It is a motto to which I have given voice and I have taken it out, not only to help me“. It is a lifestyle. A way of living the sport. Of positioning badminton on the map.
“It is something that I also want in the future: to help young people know that in Spain we have already paved the way and have marked our country in the world with all the Asian influence badminton has there. I hope that this phrase not only helps me or other athletes, but that it can help people on the street in their daily lives.“she says proudly.
Carolina still thinks she can. He trains hard, makes decisions, manages himself and aspires to the top. He wants to continue writing the Marín surname in gold letters wherever he goes, but with one main objective: Paris 2024. In the French capital she will try to match the Chinese Zhang Ning, with a World Cup in her showcases, but the only player with two gold medals in the Olympics. So, if she isn’t already, Carolina would become the best badminton player in history.
This report was originally published on December 31, 2022 and has been recovered on the occasion of the announcement of the 2024 Princess of Asturias Sports Award for Carolina Marín herself.
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