Carolina Marin – You the champion!

Last week at the Olympics when entire India along with me was watching  the final of the women’s badminton final at Rio, hoping for an India win, I discovered another champion in Carolina Marin.

Initially I didn’t like her. She looked arrogant having a chip on her shoulder and being a tad stiff to be a player evoking respect. Add to that the screams after every points she won over our own PV Sindhu. How I wanted her to lose.

Indian won the first set and I was delighted along with millions of Indian fans who were praying for her victory. The first set was fought hard by both players and the margin of victory was narrow. But in the end PVS had won the first set and I was delighted to know that she is on course for a gold.

But, there wasn’t even a sweat on Marin’s face as if she knew the outcome of the contest and it was just a ploy to make the game little more interesting. People who know her game (at least I didn’t know while I was watching her), know she is a master in three setter matches and has a distinction of winning the match after losing the first set many times in her career.

When she was playing the badminton world championship 2014 final against world number 1 and Olympic Champion Li Xuerui she showed the same skills of coming from behind and winning. A match that was filled with suspense and drama looked to be going in the way of the Chinese player from the outset. With the opening game in the bag and a 13-8 lead in the second it looked like Li was about to avenge her 2013 final loss. 

Marin had to change something and change it she did. Moving her opponent away from the net Marin found some traction and started to impose her game on her Chinese opponent. 5 points in a row took the Spaniard from a seemingly hopeless position to being in control and with 9 of the last 11 points took the match to a deciding game. 

The final game became a battle of wits and fatigued certainly played its part with Li Xuerui calling the doctor at one point to attend to a heavily strapped ankle. All the while it was Marin who wanted to get on with the game and the trust she placed in her own shots at crucial times emphasized that the tide had certainly turned in favour of the European Champion. 

At 17-17 it was Marin who stole the initiative to claim hers and Spain’s first ever world Championship gold to the utter disbelief of her opponent.

But I didn’t know this. And I was on the side of Sindhu, hoping she wins.

Second set, the known champion came out of slumber and raced away with the set by 21-12, a huge 9 point gap between the two players. And now she was in her own territory when it is the three setter, as if telling the world that "In order to explore the sea you have to lose sight of the shore." It was easy picking in the third set too and she won comfortably by 21-15 and the world champion once again stamped her authority on the game and won the Gold medal.

But by the end, she also won my respect. While I didn’t like PV Sindhu’s loss but I liked Marin’s win. And it made me think why? These are some thoughts which came in mind:

1. There is no harm in wearing your attitude on your sleeves: We are all told and taught that we shouldn’t be arrogant and show our attitude while competing. Marin right from the beginning walked around the court as if she is the queen and no one can defeat her. The body language, the aura of someone being ready to kill and be very confident of oneself is not a bad thing at all if you use it to motivate yourself and it doesn’t disrespect others.
2. You can always come back: Lot of us give up if we encounter any obstacle and find ourselves wrapped in negative thoughts of how everything from thereon can go bad. But not with Marin, she knows very well the game is of three sets and winner is one who wins 2 out of 3 and it doesn’t matter if these two sets are first two or last two. The point is you have to win the two and that’s it. It’s a great lesson in knowing that in life everything is not lost if you don’t have a good start.
3. Dare to dream: Somebody winning Olympic gold in badminton from Spain doesn’t go well because of south Asian domination in this game. A young girl from Huelva in Spain dared to dream and worked hard to achieve her dream. She was the one who always came to the court just before the start of the game and left immediately so that she is not distracted. She always wanted only ONE thing and that’s winning.

4. Winners also have emotion but they know how & when to express: She is number one, she is the world champion and she is the Olympic champion but that didn’t stopped her from crying in front of everyone. She let it out and let everyone know what it means to her.The embrace to PVS removed all my doubts about her arrogance and it showed as if telling in her ears (don’t worry girl, you played well) and that tells us what real winners are made of.

Overall, I was glad to known her & was interested enough to go back and read her story. More I read, more I realized that why she walked the way she did at Rio and why she was pretty confident of herself. The aura of a champion which is in her game was not there right from the beginning (she lost in the first round of London Olympics) and instead of being down and out, she proved once again the very basic truth that a determined mind can achieve anything it sets out to achieve.

Carolina  Marin – You are a champion!