Three-time world champion Carolina Marin, who was due to take part in the TotalEnergies BWF World Championships 2021 on home soil, announced her withdrawal from the event as she was unable to recover completely from a left knee injury sustained earlier in the year.
“Mentally it has been really hard to keep myself up,” Marin said in a video statement. “My priorities have always been health and wellbeing. Therefore my team and I have decided not to play the World Championships, and we have also taken the decision of not having a formal date of comeback to competition until we are 100 per cent sure that my knee is fully recovered. So we will be evaluating the progress of the knee and the sensation I’m having with it daily. We believe I might be officially playing again in February or March.”
Nos vemos la semana que viene en #Huelva2021, pero no en la pista 🏸🙏
See you next week in #Huelva2021, but not on court 🏸🙏#BWFWorldChampionships @sportssantander @santander_es pic.twitter.com/TEeSU2rvND
— Carolina Marín (@CarolinaMarin) December 10, 2021
Marin had a great start to the year, winning two of three finals in successive weeks in January, capturing the YONEX Swiss Open in March and the European Championships in May, before hurting her left knee later that month during training. A torn ACL and damaged meniscus in the knee necessitated surgery, which ruled her out of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
“I had a really good season start, I won four tournaments out of five. I was feeling very confident, strong and in a really good physical and psychological condition until just one bad movement broke my knee completely,” rued Marin.
Quite significantly, the World Championships are being held in her home city of Huelva, and in an arena named after her.
“See you next week in #Huelva2021, but not on court,” signed off Marin in her statement.
Her coach Fernando Rivas said the current injury was more serious compared to last year’s knee injury from which she had recovered: “The recovery process of this second injury has been a bit different from the first one. First, the injury has been more serious. The meniscus were deeply affected so she could not stand until she went a bit further in the recovery. Second, because of the mistakes we did on the first injury recovery, we learnt quite a lot. Third, because of the time it happened, the decision of not playing the World Championships has been motivated by the delay we had during the recovery process. From now on we have to focus on recovering the court skills, add intensity, recover tactical concepts and learn from the past. In January we hope to come back to regular training, and in February we hope to be ready for competitions.”