Martita Ortega, between paddle tennis and Medicine: "You see serious things and value what is important"

In 2019, Marta Ortega (Madrid, 1997), Martita for the entire world circuit, became the youngest number one in the history of padel. He won nine tournaments in just a few months and hit the ceiling of his sport. I was only 22 years old. Success on the courts could have blinded him, even more so in a World Padel Tour that was constantly evolving on the way to more succulent income, but Ortega, pushed by his family, managed to maintain a double sporting and academic career that over time has become The Doctor of world padel. She was number 1, she finished her university degree in Medicine at the same time and four years later she is number 6 in the world. Stay in the elite. From there she attends to EL MUNDO, convinced that academic responsibility has been key to her success.

“Many times, paddle tennis saved my career in Medicine and Medicine saved my sports career,” the talk admits.. “When I went to a tournament and things went wrong, the next day I had to click and start studying. And if I finished some exams and had half a day free, I would focus on training until I knew the grade I had gotten so as not to get stressed,” he summarizes, and confesses that everything is a matter of “priorities.”. “I knew that maybe on a Friday afternoon or night there would be a birthday that I really wanted, but on Saturday morning I had a game or training. “I couldn't enjoy that, but I knew that if on Sunday or whenever the national team list came out and I was on it, I was going to be happier than my teammates had been on Friday.”

Does an athlete who studies mature sooner? Sooner and very quickly. Being a medical student and experiencing very serious things, you learn to value what is truly important and what is not.. And then it has helped me manage the tension, because I used to get very, very, very nervous during the exams, much more than when playing.. Suddenly the doctor leaves and you are left there with the patient, and in that stress and in those nerves you have to assert yourself and respect yourself.. And that is also very good for competition, and vice versa.. Competing brings you to a level of stress that then makes concentrating to study very easy. My friends, for example, took forever to concentrate, and as soon as I saw the book I focused and became focused.

In a recent report in this newspaper, directors of several Spanish football clubs highlighted the importance that the study was acquiring for the players in their quarry.. It is no longer that passing or aspiring to higher education can help them in their lives, but that the debutants of the First and Second Division were, for the most part, notable students.. Ortega, an Adidas athlete, knows that detail better than anyone: “It makes a lot of difference. An athlete who is disorderly may have very good moments in a season or in a tournament, but in the long term he may be much more irregular, while perhaps those of us who are not so talented, I do not consider myself a talented person but hard worker, we can have a slightly more regular career, without big moments, but more regular,” he details.

Is there equality in paddle tennis? In the sporting part, I would say yes, 100%. Maybe the boys play more on the center court than us, which is something we would like to change, or the schedules, maybe they play more in the afternoon than we do, but it is also something that has advantages and disadvantages. On an economic level there was equality at the time and now not completely, but in the short term it seems that it is done and signed. And well, at the sponsorship level perhaps that is where it is lacking. Boys always have more, they reach for more things and higher financial amounts. When you retire, will you return to the hospital? 100%. I'm doing a master's degree in sports medicine and it's more or less what I know I want to do. I am not going to separate myself from paddle tennis in life because it has been my life and I am passionate about it, but I am lucky to have studied the career that I wanted and it is what I want to be when I am very old. I have studied for a long time and I have prepared so much that it is what I want.