Olympic champion (her injury in the Paris ’24 semi-final still hurts), three-time world champion, seven-time European champion (the last one in 2024) and the first European to win two consecutive world titles (2014 and 2015)After winning the 2018 World Cup, Carolina Marín became the first player in the world to win three titles in this competition.
A more than enough curriculum for the jury of the 2024 Princess of Asturias Sports Awards – made up of Teresa Bernadas Porto, Tomás de Cos Relaño, Joaquín Folch-Rusiñol Corachán, Juan Ignacio Gallardo Tomé, Feliciano López Díaz-Guerra, Santiago Nolla Zayas, Guadalupe Porras Ayuso, Julián Redondo Pérez, Paloma del Río Cañadas, Samuel Sánchez González, Sitapha Savané Sagna and Alberto Suárez Laso, chaired by Teresa Perales Fernández and Patricia García Rodríguez acting as secretary – awarded him this award “for his extraordinary achievements in badminton, a sport in which it has become an international reference.
He began practicing badminton when he was eight years old at the IES La Orden Recreational Club.
Carolina Marín, “first and only non-Asian Olympic champion athlete in this discipline“, the ruling emphasizes, “in addition to being the best player in the history of badminton in Spain and one of the best in the world, she is an example of improvement, a source of inspiration and transmitter of values, on and off the court.”
Despite this background, the athlete has pointed out this Princess of Asturias Sports Award as, “without a doubt, the most important award of my career. I have always believed that sport serves to break barriers and is a source of inspiration and values. And if these factors have made me deserve this recognition, I can only feel grateful for it.”
Born in Huelva on June 15, 1993, Carolina Marín Martín He began practicing badminton when he was eight years old at the IES La Orden Recreational Club. from his hometown. After achieving several victories at the regional level and several Spanish champion titles, she was selected at the age of fourteen to enter the High Performance Center of the Higher Sports Council in Madrid, where she has become the best badminton player in history. of this sport in Spain and one of the best in the world.
In 2021, a knee injury prevented him from competing in the 2020 Tokyo Games, but in 2022 he returned to the courts and won his sixth European title.
She has contributed like no one else to the promotion and popularization of badminton in Spain and has become one of the most acclaimed athletes in the country. He achieved his first international successes in lower categories. In 2009 she was the first Spaniard to win a medal in the European Championships: silver in the European Junior Championships and gold in the European Under-17 Championships. In 2011 she was proclaimed European youth champion and the following year she participated in the London Olympic Games, won bronze in the Junior World Cup, ninth overall and reached twenty-sixth place in the world rankings. In 2013 she played with the Indian team Banga Beats from Bangalore (now Bengaluru Raptors) in the inaugural edition of the Indian Badminton League, one of the most important in the world, and became the first Spaniard to win a Badminton Grand Prix, the London Grand Prix Gold.
In 2014, she became European champion in April and world champion in August, becoming the third European player to win World Cup gold, after the Danish Lene Køppen (1977) and Camilla Martin (1999), and, furthermore, with Twenty-one years old, she was the youngest of the three to achieve it. In March 2015 he won his first Premier Superseries title, the All England, which allowed him to rise to fourth place in the international ranking. Her subsequent victories at the Malaysian and Australian Opens made her number one, something a European has not achieved since 2010.
In August 2015, at the World Championships in Jakarta (Indonesia), she retained her world title, a double that only four Chinese players had previously achieved: Li Lingwei (1983 and 1989), Han Aiping (1985 and 1987), Ye Zhaoying (1995-1997) and Xie Xingfang (2005 and 2006). In 2016 she was once again proclaimed European champion and achieved her first Olympic champion title by winning the gold medal at the Rio Games. In 2017, 2018 and 2021 he added three new continental championships to his record, in addition to his third world title in 2018.
In 2021, a knee injury prevented him from competing in the 2020 Tokyo Games, but in 2022 he returned to the courts and won his sixth European title.. In 2023 he achieved second place in the world championship and the gold medal at the European Games held in Poland. This same year she achieved her second title at the prestigious All England Open and her seventh European champion title.
Carolina Marín has received, among other honors, the Bronze Medal (2014) and Gold Medal (2016) of the Royal Order of Sports Merit, the Queen Letizia National Sports Award for the best Spanish athlete of the year (2014), the from Huelva (2015), the Best Spanish Athlete Award from the Spanish Olympic Committee (2015), the distinction of Best Player of the Year from the European Badminton Federation (2015) and Best World Player from the International Badminton Federation (2015). , the Andalusian Medal (2018), the Sports Values Award given by the newspaper Sport and the Prensa Ibérica publishing company (2020) and the Plaza de España Award from the Government Delegation in Andalusia (2021).
