It is three in the afternoon on Saturday and the badminton European medal ceremony has just ended, the sixth in a row for Carolina Marín.
Fernando Rivas (Granada, 44 years old), her trainer, attends EL PAÍS sitting on a stool in the gym.
The atmosphere is, of course, festive.
"Come on, we've put the beers to cool!" He listens to himself.
Marín is finishing treatment with the physio and distributes the packets of ham that were in the gift box among her team.
They open them and eat them right there.
Ask.
Carolina Marín says that athletes are not stratospheric beings.
What athlete is she?
Response.
There are athletes and athletes... I always say that there are extraordinary athletes.
If not, why would there be one that is better than another?
Obviously it has to do with effort and work.
Guille [Guillermo Sánchez, the physical trainer] likes to talk about epigenetics, about being born with potential and surrounding yourself with an environment that multiplies that potential and takes you where she has arrived.
With that epigenetics, however, not everyone can do it.
They are not stratospheric... but they are special beings, not everyone can do what she does, what Nadal or Phelps does, not everyone wins the Olympic Games, not everyone gets a match point in the Olympic Games with the conviction that Carolina did or as she has done in the European.
Q.
Why does she get it and the others don't?
R.
Because he was born with X conditions and because of his character development, because of the situations he has had in his life, beyond the genetics that he has, that knowing his family he has, because he has a mother with character.
She also tells of the example that her parents have given her, her father was a great worker and her mother was the same.
To this we must add a very professional environment, all of us who are around her have a great desire to always improve, to innovate and to take her to the best version of herself.
The high level is not achieved by everyone, make no mistake.
There are some chosen ones and the chosen ones have to work and for this they need an environment that allows them to develop.
Look, there's a book by Ken Robinson,
The Element .
, in which he advocates an education outside the conventional.
Establish a series of rules to develop your talent and one of them is that you choose what you are passionate about and that you look for an ecosystem of people like you and that is where you are going to develop.
And it is a bit what has happened to Carolina.
There are some chosen ones and the chosen ones have to work and for this they need an environment that allows them to develop.
P.
During the European have you or she been more pissed off?
A.
She.
I don't get pissed off once.
We knew it was very difficult.
Especially in the quarterfinal match [against the Danish Line Hojmark Kjaersfeld, the only match in which she gave up a set] that she could perfectly lose.
We assume it.
For us it was already a prize to be here and we have handled it well.
We really wanted to enjoy.
There have been very frustrating moments because the tactics did not work out, some hits did not work either, but neither better nor worse than three, four, five years ago.
The perfect match is never made.
P.
What was in those long hugs after the semifinal and the final?
R.
A lot of emotion, a lot of affection, a lot of admiration.
It is a very intense personal, professional and sports relationship that transcends sports.
It is also a mutual thanks.
Because of the work done and because no one from the team has failed in the face of difficulty, no one has gotten off the car, we have done absolutely everything so that Carolina was well.
This situation has united us much more.
You can't imagine how lucky I am to be on this team.
More information
Carolina Marín: anatomy of an emotional recovery
P.
When Carolina broke up again on May 28, you repeated a phrase to me a lot: “this is too hard even for someone like Carol”.
R.
When an athlete like Carolina is injured, it is already devastating, and this was also very, very cruel.
A month and a half before the Games, training as she was training, with very complex strategies that she had just made her own.
Q.
What worried you?
R.
At the beginning I was worried not that I would enter a depression, but rather in a laziness for stick after stick.
The last three years have been very hard.
That's why we decided to give him another type of rehabilitation.
She wanted to pick up the racket right away and we said: 'none of that, we're going to give a few joys to the body that you're missing and you've taken quite a few sticks'.
We know that her family comforts her and we tried to make that happen a lot;
the training sessions were more playful, as well as the rehabilitation.
The communication was different, the racket was kept.
Q.
How was the communication different?
R.
The words: we did not use the word train, but recover or rehabilitate.
P.
In three years everything has happened to them.
If you look back, what is the first thing you see?
R.
I have recorded the first injury I saw on TV [Anders Thomsen, the assistant coach, traveled to the Indonesian tournament], the missed calls on my cell phone from Anders the day Carolina broke again [Fernando was confined by Covid] and When I called her back, I saw her crying on the floor.
The conversations we had when his dad was in the hospital.
I also remember the day he called me to tell me that his father had left;
We were all on vacation in different parts of Spain and we all [Guillermo, María Martínez the psychologist, Carlos de Santos the physio] took the car to go to Huelva.
The next morning we were with her, like a family.
And she makes me excited to remember it now.
Q.
How do you keep improving at 28 years old?
R.
To improve the first thing you have to admit is that you need to improve.
If you want to invest time in a workout, it must have a utility.
For that we always analyze the games well, where we are losing points, where we are losing initiative, how effective we are in some aspects of the game.
Q.
What did you like most about this European?
R.
That the things that we have trained work and that it is not necessary to run so much on the track, there are many other ways to play.
With different angles, with different speeds.
Q.
Carolina has a very strong back.
A.
Yes, we have worked a lot on the posterior musculature of the scapulae.
She is a very offensive player and to accelerate her arm a lot we need good brakes and the muscles that she brakes are the scapulae.
Hard braking is what speeds up the wheel, we want the wheel to spin fast.
They are milliseconds, but it is the difference between winning and losing.
P.
In what percentage of physical condition is Carolina now with respect to her best version?
A.
60-70%.
There is a lot of room for improvement.
Q.
What has Carolina seen on her return to competition?
R.
The one we had prepared.
Mentally very good, we still have to improve some emotional aspects such as when there is frustration or fear.
At a tactical level, as soon as he improves physically... beware!
More information
Carolina Marín and the 'traps' of the physical trainer so that the brain would forget about the knee
Q.
What is non-negotiable?
A.
The effort.
I do not believe in success without effort and without work.
Q.
You have been working with Carolina for 14 years.
Is there something that still surprises you about her?
R.
More than surprising me, it is something to highlight: the ability to reconnect, to recover from a bad game.
It's hard to do that, eh, because there are athletes who have a bad game and drag it out until a week later.
She doesn't, she reconnects with the things we train and you see her, she even changes her body language.
Q.
Has your requirement or the way you understand the requirement changed?
R.
No, the way of applying it has changed.
Carolina is no longer 14 years old, I can't be forcing her to do things.
I got to sit in the coach's chair and stay in the pavilion until things came out.
At 28, I'm not going to do that.
Now it is through more assertive conversations, always being honest both of them.
Carolina is right now at 60-70% of her best version.
There is a lot of room for improvement.
P.
Carolina has said that on the podium she cried because she saw herself on the podium in Paris 2024 and that is where she wants to be.
R.
That is very good news, because if we manage to connect that emotion with that desire and that emotion with a training process, it is very likely to happen.
Q.
You will arrive in Paris at the age of 30.
May be a problem?
R.
No. The normal thing is to be Olympic champion before, but there are cases in which they have been at 31-32.
In Beijing 2008, Zhang Ning was 33. What we have to do is respect injuries.
Q.
What have you emphasized most in this second recovery?
R.
In playing smarter, so you can keep your physique.
We will have to measure the meters that it travels, and surely they are less than before.
I like chess on the court.
Q.
How long will it take for Spain to have a Carolina Marín again?
A.
A thousand years.
Because it is exceptional.
And it is not Spain, it is the world.
There is no other like her in the world.
It will be difficult for him to fall in badminton, maybe another one appears in another sport.
Q.
Why have you disassociated yourself from the Spanish Federation?
R.
Because I needed a change, I needed to have more freedom, dedicate myself to the things that truly fill me.
Now I am happy and I feel good and useful and that is reflected in my work with Carolina.
In addition, I had a proposal from the French Federation that allowed me to be fully compatible with the things that fill me.
It's time for others to pick up the slack and start churning out champions.
Q.
What is in charge of the French Federation?
R.
I am responsible for the development of the senior project.
He is a kind of
head coach
, I don't train the athletes, but the system and the coaches.
I deal with the development of the tactical analysis system, monitoring.
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