Devastated former Olympic champion Carolina Marin yesterday withdrew in tears from her badminton semi-final after her right knee buckled in distressing scenes.
Marin, who won women’s singles gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, was on track to reach the final, but collapsed midway through the second game against China’s He Bingjiao.
Coaches and He rushed to her side as she lay on the ground for several minutes, clutching her leg.
Photo: AFP
She eventually got up and walked off the court then resumed wearing a support, but she could barely move, losing the next two points before falling to the ground again and retiring.
Marin, the fourth seed in Paris, won the first game 21-14 and was leading 10-6 in the second before she left the court in tears and going for a medical check.
Her coach, Fernando Rivas, told reporters that he had “no words to describe what happened.”
“Carolina knows that at an Olympic Games, you win or you lose,” he said. “But not this way.”
Marin was a hot favorite for the title at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago until she sustained an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury just months before the event — her second ACL injury.
“She was in pain, it’s a sensation that she already knew,” Rivas said. “Now we have a lesson and we need to restart and try to understand what happened.”
Marin’s withdrawal drew a sympathetic response from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on social media.
“You are and always will be a champion,” he wrote on X. “All of Spain is with you.”
Her opponent He progressed to the final, where she would today play South Korean world No. 1 An Se-young.
A clearly uncomfortable He told reporters that she felt “very sad” about what had happened.
“She was playing perfectly well and I was very passive,” He said. “I wasn’t thinking about the final at all.”
An beat Indonesia’s Gregoria Mariska Tunjung 11-21, 21-13, 21-16 in the day’s earlier semi-final.
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