There was no consolation for Carolina Marin. Not even the thousands of fans who were standing up to say goodbye to her could stop the tears of the Spaniard, who said goodbye to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the worst possible way: when I was almost on the verge of the badminton final, my knees, my knees again, ended it all.
Until that moment Carolina Marín was dominating the semifinal against the Chinese He Bing Jiao. She had won the first set 21-14 and controlled the second (10-5). After returning to the elite by overcoming two very serious knee injuries, something that no one else had done in badminton, she saw the final in her return to the Olympic Games.
Just the day before, she proudly said that she felt like “a wolf again, who bites and doesn’t let go until the end.” And she had it written on her hand. “She-wolf.”
Gone were the mornings when I was afraid to wake up and put a foot on the ground; afraid to go to games; afraid to lose; afraid to win.
It was a comeback like thousands of others. But in a bad position his right knee gave way, the same one that started the ordeal in 2019.
“I’m broken,” Carolina Marín said immediately, looking towards the bench. Cursing and breaking down in tears.
“It was as soon as she hit the ground. It’s a feeling she already knows, so if she told me that, it must be true,” lamented her coach, Fernando Rivas.
The Spanish woman knew immediately that the dream was over, but between knowing it and accepting it there was an unbridgeable gap.
After receiving the first aids, Carolina Marín took a knee brace out of her bag and tried to restart the match. It was so close, everything was so cruel, that she had to try.
But the reality check was relentless. The Rio 2016 Olympic champion could not even put any weight on her foot and at the second point, after looking at her coach, Fernando Rivas, she collapsed on the baseline.
