For someone who took up badminton as a hobby, Carolina Marin has come a long way to be the reigning Olympic and world champion but the Spaniard yearns for more as she continues her journey towards becoming the best-ever in the sport.<\/p>\n
In August, Marin became the first woman player to win three World Championships titles when she beat India\u2019s Pusarla Sindhu in Nanjing to add to her gold medals from 2014 and 2015. China\u2019s Lin Dan has won two Olympic men\u2019s singles gold medals and five world championship crowns and is widely considered the greatest shuttler.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell I would like to be the best player in the history of badminton,\u201d Marin told Reuters in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to say but I know it\u2019s going to be really, really difficult. I am ready to do anything to get that. \u201cI would like to win one more Olympic Games and minimum two more World Championships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dubbed the Rafa Nadal of badminton in Spain for her tenacity and fierce left-handed game, Marin ended Asia\u2019s hegemony at the Olympics when she beat Sindhu in the Rio 2016 final.<\/p>\n
\u201cBadminton is not much popular in Spain. I just played badminton like a hobby, I didn\u2019t think too much about becoming a world champion,\u201d said the 25-year old, who represents Pune 7 Aces in the ongoing Premier Badminton League in India.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I cannot explain in words, it\u2019s impossible to explain. I had to put in so much effort to make my dream come true. I had to make so many sacrifices. It was really really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marin finds the BWF rule forcing the top 15 shuttlers to participate in at least 12 events per season too taxing and believes the governing body should do more to protect the players from injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that may be they have to think more about the players because the players are the main thing for the world federation or Spanish federation or any federation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they force the players to play so many tournaments in a year, we cannot do that. We are human, we are not robots, so sometimes we get injured because we are being forced to play so many tournaments. If we don\u2019t play because we are injured then we have to pay a fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming from a country with no real pedigree in badminton, Marin believes she has been able to popularise the sport with many children picking up a racquet after her Olympic success. She, however, is not too sure if Spain would see another of her kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For someone who took up badminton as a hobby, Carolina Marin has come a long way to be the reigning Olympic and world champion but the Spaniard yearns for more as she continues her journey towards becoming the best-ever in the sport. In August, Marin became the first woman player to win three World Championships […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50950,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50948\/revisions\/50950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}