Carolina Marín does not come back after injury and announces retirement
Carolina Marín has announced her retirement from professional badminton and will not compete at the European Championships on home soil in Huelva, Spain in at the beginning of April. The Spanish badminton star shared the news on social media on 26th of March. She is unable to play without putting her body at risk, and has decided to end to her career.
Carolina has generated a lot of headlines over the past few years, with amazing achievements but also a lot of criticism by fans, who are not keen on her shouting on court. But I think we can all agree that Carolina has been an amazing badminton player and has achieved many things most players can only dream of. For example winning the Olympics gold medal as the first badminton player from Spain and also the first women’s singles Olympic champion from outside Asia is one of these great achievements. Besides being Olympic Champion, she is a three-time world champion, eight-time European champion and has won 41 titles in total. These achievements outline why she is regarded as one of the best women’s singles players ever.
Her withdrawal from the European Championships comes with huge disappointment for fans who wanted to see her make a final comeback after her heartbreaking injury at the Olympics semi-final in Paris. Carolina has been working on getting back for the second time after tearing her ACL, the first time in 2019 she did it with success, but the second time has proved to be too much to get back from. ‘I wished my career would have ended differently, but in life things don’t always go as we want’ Carolina mentions on IG. As everybody who has had a serious injury (read this article) knows, getting back to your top level is very hard. Carolina has defied the odds the first time and I think this is something that we can all admire.
Carolina will go down in the history books as one of the very best women’s singles players, and her impact is undeniable. It would be great to see her be involved in badminton in the future one way or another.
