Carolina Marín: "If I was afraid of injuring myself again, I would have hung up the racket"

I can because I think I can, this is the phrase that is repeated over and over again in the mind of Carolina Marín (Huelva, 1993), and it is clear that it is a mantra that has helped her overcome her worst moments. The Olympic badminton champion and Santander bank ambassador was the godmother of the Women's Race held last Sunday in Madrid, joining the pink tide that flooded the Spanish capital with more than 32,000 runners. The athlete, who is preparing for the tournaments that lie ahead before heading to Paris, where she will play her second Olympic Games, tells EL MUNDO how her training sessions are going and how she has faced her time off the slopes due to injuries in the knee.

Taking advantage of the fact that you are the ambassador of this Women's Race. How did you live the experience? I am grateful for having been the ambassador of this very important career. I am very proud because I believe that women today are named much more, they are much more known, we are on the lips of many events and acts. I think we are being given the importance we need, and the truth is that I am very happy to have seen so many emotional women. What is your day-to-day like now? How many hours does he spend? An elite athlete prepares almost a whole day of work. I wake up at eight in the morning and finish around eight or nine in the evening. I do six or seven hour training sessions, plus an hour with the psychologist and physio sessions. He has gone through two very complicated knee injuries. How has the recovery process been? The last injury, which was exactly two years ago, has been a tedious process because I had very frustrating pain for a year and a half. Mentally it has been very difficult for me to accept a pain that I did not want to have in my body. Especially since in the morning I got up without really knowing how my knee was going to be.. It has also been frustrating not being able to handle the training load that my team placed on me and that we always had to change training sessions.. In the end I was going to compete without having done good training, and that way it is very difficult to perform against the best and compete at a high level. To this day, since December, after finally touching many keys: changing insoles, infiltrations, removing fluid from the knee, etc., I can say that I don't have that pain that I had before.. It is an operated knee, obviously we have to continue taking care of it because it will not be the same as before, but I am finally accumulating very good training sessions that are going to make me perform much better in competition. He has commented that he does sessions with a psychologist. How has the issue of injuries worked on a mental level? Were you afraid of playing again and injuring yourself? If you were afraid of injuring yourself again, you would have hung up your racket by now. We have had to develop a lot of calm and patience, which are not my innate virtues, because I am very impatient and I want things now. In addition, we have had to work on the issue of going little by little, of not taking many steps forward, because in the end the knee tells you that you have to go slowly. Also emotional control, not keeping anything inside, but talking about it with my psychologist, sharing it with my team, that has also been an important process..

THE WORLD His motto is I can because I think I can. I imagine that it is a phrase that has helped him a lot in this time away from the slopes,. Where did it originate? It arose in a session with the first psychologist I had. A sentence came out and then I have given it the shape with my own words. To this day I keep it because, it is no longer something that has helped me at a certain stage of my sports career, but I also see that it helps people. For me that is a source of pride. After the break due to the last injury, he has returned to the slopes winning two tournaments and reaching two other finals. How do you assess it? The balance is being quite positive, although it is true that there is still room for improvement. We are working on it, on the way to continue improving, polishing details and, above all, preparing the tournaments that I have on the world circuit, since in summer I have the World Championship. The World Championship is closer, but is it going away? Are you thinking about Paris 2024? There is still more than a year left for the Olympic Games. There are many tournaments ahead in which I want to focus much more, because that will make me try to climb to the top of the world ranking to come out in a good position in the Games. Throughout his entire sporting career he has won multiple tournaments , has been a three-time world champion, six times a European champion and has achieved Olympic gold. Do you feel that these good results create pressure for always having to win? I think that I put that pressure on myself. In the end, the external pressure from the people is always there, in the sense that they want me to win, but I put it on even more, because I am the one who wants to win the most.. Although it is not only about winning, but the first thing is to enjoy. In addition to enjoying what he does, he lived moments in which he had to sacrifice. You left Huelva for Madrid to train at the age of 14. What was that process like? It was complicated, especially my parents' decision. I lived in a situation in which my parents were separated, I am an only child, I don't have anyone from my family in Madrid, so it was a very complicated decision. Despite this, I can assure you that my parents are, to this day, very proud of that decision and of everything I have achieved. In Madrid you met your current coach, Fernando Rivas, with him you have formed an inseparable team. Isn't it? It's a pairing in which we support each other. Fernando demands a lot from me on the track, and I also from him, because in the end he has to spend all his time thinking about new things to do, strategies, etc.. I think it has been like putting two pieces together. Lastly, people are normally advised to practice sports to disconnect. How does an elite athlete do it? I disconnect by resting, lying on the sofa or in my garden, having dinner with friends or with my partner, reading or watching series. This is how we athletes disconnect.