The native of Huelva Caroline Marinworld champion badminton and who starred in one of the most striking images of the Paris Olympic Games After injuring his knee while fighting to reach the gold medal final, he courageously revisited that cruel chapter that temporarily ended his brilliant sporting career. It is time to recover and Marín is not thinking about giving up at all. This is his third ligament tear.
His idea is to get back on the track as soon as possible and retire in his native country, European elections 2026 in Huelva: “I’ve thought about it a lot. I would be very sad if an injury eliminated me. I want to retire on a badminton court, but I don’t know when. I have an appointment scheduled and if my leg allows it, and my head and heart want it, I would like to retire on a badminton court. If we work well, the leg recovers and I am mentally ready, I see it as possible. I see Games very far away, my idea was to retire next year at the World Cup in Paris, I see another event in 2026, a European Championship to be held in Huelva. I would love to retire at home,” he confessed in an interview with ‘El Partidazo’, on Cadena Cope.
During the interview, Carolina Marín recounted how she experienced the injury during the semi-finals in Paris this summer: “I’m getting calmer now. I have to deal with it. I need to see how it would be if I played badminton again. I didn’t pick up my phone until the following week, but I saw the images the same day or the day after. I felt very good, mentally I said to myself ‘today I win’ and physically I felt very good. I can’t find out why. At that moment I knew it because that’s how I injured myself in 2019 in that same leg and that’s why I told Fernando ‘I broke it’. “I had eleven points left and I was so good that I wanted to try because I saw myself in the final.”
Regarding the minutes that followed, he acknowledged how complicated they were: “It was hard because the medical services came and brought me a wheelchair but I wanted to manage on my own. Then I thought I was crazy because I knew I had probably broken my cruciate. It was very hard because I went to the locker room, I was tired of crying, tears of desolation. For five years, life and sport have been very cruel to me, with two injuries and the loss of my father… I said ‘I can’t take it anymore’,” admitted the Huelva native.
“People realized the work that went into it”
And Marín has had to overcome an ordeal of injuries: “I thought about it a lot, especially with the second injury, before Tokyo. I couldn’t believe it and I asked myself ‘why are they stopping me’. You fight it with determination, desire and motivation. Experience can help you, but at the moment, as it is my third knee and in my last Games, it has made me fall a lot. For four days I was able to sleep better, but before that I couldn’t sleep because it was very uncomfortable and very hard.
After the injury, the athlete admitted to being surprised by the affection that all the people showed her: “I feel very loved, I would never have imagined that the Spanish people would have sympathized with me. If I had won the gold, it would have been normal that I would have won the gold, but overcoming two injuries, the loss of my father and almost reaching an Olympic final… people realized what is behind that,” he expressed.
At the time of her injury and defeat in the semi-final, it was proposed that Carolina Marín receive an honorary bronze medal: “I did not deserve this honorary medal because in other Games, other players were injured. But I didn’t want the bronze medal, I wanted the gold medal; I wouldn’t have been on the podium. “I don’t want to think I’m better than anyone else.”
About all messages of encouragement that he received, he admitted that he had not picked up his cell phone for a week, but that once he started to answer, one of them surprised him: “I had so many messages that it was endless and I answered them all. In one of them, he had an audio and at the end he told me “My name is Rafa Nadal”. I couldn’t believe it, a tear fell. I replayed the audio and one tear after another. “I can’t stop at just one message, there were so many… With gold, I wouldn’t have received so much love,” he concluded.
