The Spanish badminton player Carolina Marín has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Sports Award 2024. The jury read the ruling this Wednesday at the Barceló Cervantes Hotel in Oviedo.
24 candidates from 14 nationalities were competing for the Princess of Asturias of Sports.
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 2014, the Huelva Medal (2015 ) and the Award for Best Spanish Athlete from the Spanish Olympic Committee (2015).
Carolina Marín was born in Huelva on June 15, 1993. She began practicing badminton when she was eight years old at the IES La Orden Recreational Club in her hometown.
After achieving several regional victories and several Spanish champion titles, she was selected at the age of 14 to enter the Madrid High Performance Center and has become the best Spanish player in badminton history and one of the best in the world. .
Marín has been Olympic champion at the Rio 2016 Games, three-time world champion, in 2014, 2015 and 2018, champion at the Krakow 2023 European Games, and seven-time European champion, in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018. , 2021, 2002 and 2024.
However, he missed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to a knee injury.
Marín, who in 2014 became the first non-Asian player to enter the top ten of the badminton World Cup, takes over from Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge, two-time Olympic marathon champion, who last year was distinguished by the jury as a “reference of world athletics” and as the “best runner” in the discipline “of all time.”
In previous editions, among others, the Refugee Olympic team, Lindsey Vonn, the All Blacks, the brothers Pau and Marc Gasol, the Spanish soccer team, Rafa Nadal, Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Txema Olazábal and Seve Ballesteros were honored.
