The illusion of becoming the first athlete in the sport of badminton from the Dominican Republic to attend an Olympic Games has moved away from Nairobi Abigail Jiménez a bit.
And all for the coronavirus pandemic.
At the time of learning about the Covid-19 virus, Jiménez was in a comfortable position in his career to get a place for Tokyo 2020, but everything collapsed with the arrival of the coronavirus.
“The coronavirus knocked down too many things for me. I was close to qualifying but everything stopped ”, Jiménez, the tallest athlete in Dominican badminton, winner of a silver medal in mixed doubles at the last Central American and Caribbean Games in Barranquilla, Colombia 2018, playing alongside Nelson Javier.
“It was a very hard blow for me,” insists the current women’s national champion since 2017.
Deserved rest
However, staying at home allowed him to learn to cook and he has had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with his family, something that he did not achieve years ago due to international and national commitments.
“If I have had anything to benefit from this whole pandemic, it is that I learned to cook,” says Jiménez, who is ranked among the top ten in America.
Jiménez, who just turned 20 on October 22, has not lost hope of achieving his goals of participating in the next Tokyo Olympics.
He knows that what remains for him to reach a quota in Tokyo 2021 will not be easy, since his main opponents in the region have little more than 70 days working with the same goal.
“Everything has become a little late for me, because we started just this week (last week)”, when they entered the “bubble” that has been jointly organized by the Ministry of Sports, the Ministry of Public Health and the Dominican Olympic Committee in the Olympic Hostel.
His ideal weight for the competition is about 160 pounds and today he is 170 and works in aerobics and other physical exercises to achieve his weight under the guidance of technicians Orlando Cala and Miguel Feliz.
objective
His coach Orlando Cala believes that all is not lost.
“She has a lot of chance of winning a place for the Olympic Games, for that we are working hard,” says the Cuban coach who works with the Dominican Miguel Feliz to get Jiménez to full fitness.
Two daily work sessions will be enough for her to get into shape soon because for the month of March or April the events must be held for a quota.
There is also the hope of landing a “wildcar” because of the rising position he has reached internationally.
It is ranked 142nd of the best classified in the world with more than 8 thousand points, says Generoso Castillo, director of the Dominican Badminton Federation.
The goal
Nairobi Jiménez still has the illusion of becoming the first Dominican badminton athlete to attend an Olympics and to give satisfaction to her parents (Julio César Jiménez and Yovanni Ramírez) that it has been worth dedicating herself to this emerging sport in the Republic Dominican.
His brothers Kelvin Joel and Rainiel are waiting to celebrate the feat and the Dominican Badminton Federation to walk with pride to achieve a goal that other sports with greater tradition have not achieved.
.
