'Best woman in badminton' Carolina Marín nets sixth consecutive European championship
Monday, May 2, 2022 @ 8:58 PM
BADMINTON megastar Carolina Marín has reaffirmed her place as the world's best female in the history of the sport after clinching her sixth European championship win on the trot – in an express final which saw her dispatch her rival in just 41 minutes.
Badminton whizz-kid Carolina Marín, 28, celebrates her victory in the European championship final against Scotland's Kirsty Gilmour…again
Scotland's Kirsty Gilmour – whom Carolina also beat in the European championship finals in 2016 - took the reserve championship title, returning home with a silver medal, after a two-set match ending on 21-10 and 21-12 to Carolina, who has spent a good deal of the last three years away from the scene due to an ongoing knee injury.
She broke a ligament at the Indonesian Open in January 2019, crashing out of the final, and spent the rest of the year recovering from surgery – only for 2020 to see every single sporting circuit on earth shut down due to the Covid pandemic.
A flare-up means Carolina has been away from the court for the past 11 months, missing the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, where she had been tipped for a gold – a repeat of her performance in Rio 2016.
But this morning's European championship final in Madrid proved she was back on form – and then some – as she carried off the crown she has held onto fast since 2014.
The Huelva-born prodigy left a trail of high-calibre rivals in her wake – The Netherlands' Gayle Mahulette, Estonia's Kristin Kuuba, Belgium's Lianne Tan, and Denmark's Mia Blichfeldt, who was seeded second – and only dropped one set throughout the entire tournament, during the quarter-finals against Denmark's Line Hojmark Kjærsfeldt, who was the sole fellow competitor who really forced Carolina to work for her win.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com