Many tears, the TV off and a hotel room: Carolina Marín's path to the European Championships in Madrid

"I was confined. I had been locked up at home for a few days because of covid and I was just on a Zoom with one of the engineers who help me with the analysis of

's training sessions. I saw that

, the assistant coach] He called me and called me and I hung up every time until I thought: "Something has happened." "It's broken, it's broken," Anders began to tell me. I asked him to put me on a video call and, when I was able to talk to Carolina , I was still on the ground. It was hard. It was very hard."

, Carolina Marín's coach,

recounts the nightmare that every Olympic champion fears.

Last June, a month before the Tokyo Games, the world badminton dominator broke her left knee and had to give up the appointment.

As Marín has confessed, she cried profusely.

She cried all day.

She got tired of crying.

Until two days later she got out of bed thinking about the 2024 Paris Games. And that same day, fortunately, her coach, Rivas, tested negative for coronavirus.

Her reunion between the two, united since her childhood, was a song to her optimism.

"The worst thing that could happen to us"

"We sat down and had a long conversation. 'It's the worst thing that could happen to us, but it is what it is. We can only look ahead and Paris is not that far away'. That was the message. And Carolina, at least her analytical side, I had it very clear. But I still had to go through the duel, work on it. Unlike with the first knee injury, this time we gave ourselves a lot of time. We left the racket in the closet and Carolina had days to be with family and friends. There was no longer a rush and the important thing was to recover her emotionally. From the Tokyo Olympics, in fact, both she and I saw little, very little. Turning on the television was not a pleasant thing."

Now Marin is back.

After almost an exact year without competing, after several setbacks in his recovery, such as a cyst in the external meniscus and the coronavirus itself, Marín reappears this Tuesday as the star of the European Championship held in Gallur, in Madrid.

In the five previous editions of the continental tournament, he swept it away, winning without losing a single set, but now everything is different.

Or so it is supposed.

Any analysis must point her out as a very favorite, she comes from a concentration of those before in the Sierra Nevada High Performance Center and yet...

"The goal is to compete"

"We are not in the logic of winning. Right now our objective is to compete, recover the enjoyment and see if the knee is ready. The five consecutive Europeans are no longer worth much. Carolina has trained very well in recent weeks, we are satisfied with the level, for the game, for the sensations, but the focus should not be there. If you ask me about the priority, for me it is to enjoy, enjoy and enjoy. There will be a lot of pressure around, a lot of expectations and it is not a good time to manage all that".

Angel NavarreteWORLD

Marín plays at home, even more so than four years ago when she won the Huelva European Championship, since she has lived in Madrid since she was a child and there will be no one who does not look at her.

What's more, these days she will leave her apartment in the city to settle in a hotel, because she wants to compete as if she were in any other city.

The knee injury, assures Rivas, will not condition her badminton, but the pressure could.

In any case, whatever happens, the European will only be a station on the way to the World Cup this August, precisely in Tokyo, and especially to the 2024 Paris Games. He will be 31 years old and he does not care: without another Olympic gold he will not going to withdraw

Although the knee sounds and, at times, bothers.

Although the memories of those tears, of that dramatic video call with Fernando Rivas, of those weeks without a racket, remain in the memory.

European badminton, still far from its level

Without her serious injury last year, Carolina Marín would appear at the Gallur Sports Center in Madrid practically as champion before the start of the European Championship.

Badminton on the continent, despite the efforts of countries like Denmark, is still very far from Asian badminton, with the exception of Spain.

The second European in the world ranking is the Danish

, fourteenth, and she can hardly pose a threat.

In the 2018 European final, in fact, Marín beat him in straight sets.

Another classic opponent is usually the Scottish

, whom the Spanish has won in seven of her nine matches.

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