The Caja Mágica in Madrid, a more than special place for Paula Badosa. “I have been coming here for many years and I have very good memories, especially as a young girl and the year I made the semifinals.” [2021]. I have a very nice connection with the public, so I am very excited to return, especially after a difficult year in which I have been able to enjoy relatively little. I hope to be able to do it here, whatever the games are,” she says during the media day, before this Wednesday’s debut — around 11:00, Teledeporte and Movistar + — against Jessica Bouzas (93rd). She is an athlete against her circumstances, complex to the point of having become a “constant suffering,” as she revealed a few days ago in a podcast.
Badosa, 26 years old, expresses himself helplessly. Because she is there, but she is not there. She wants to, but she can’t. He is aware that today, his tournament credit is very limited. Since the fourth lumbar vertebra played a trick on him a year ago, at the Foro Italico in Rome, when it fractured due to stress, he has not been able to take flight and his career describes a downward curve that was difficult to imagine not long ago. . Second in the world for two years and Indian Wells champion for three years, she currently occupies 101st place on the circuit and her physique has placed her at a true crossroads: they are a present and a future on the wire. The back, the beginning of the end for so many tennis players.
“I hope I can play, because tennis is still there,” he transmits with resignation, “but I have been suffering a lot with this injury. It is very complicated, chronic, difficult. I am doing everything in my power and I am working every day with my team to feel good. Zero pain? It’s very difficult, but I’m doing my best; If you allow me to get on the track and compete, I have already won. If I have to do the treatments that I said [inyecciones de cortisona]”I will do them to extend my career as much as possible.” Badosa said that “playing three or four more years” would be incredible, but reality places him in a scenario of maximum uncertainty.
In 2023, the Catalan was only able to play 27 games. And with every attempt to return, a slap. Like that, until one day she got stuck on the couch. Pains and doubts. Magnetotherapy, among other formulas. More and more treatment. “Four hours a day,” right now. And the mind, logically, suffers. “In recent months I have gone to train many days and I have lasted ten, twenty or thirty minutes, and that is mentally very hard,” he answers the question posed by this newspaper; “When I left I tried to disconnect. Mentally I have worked a lot with people who have helped me and supported me, but it is very hard to enter a track and feel discomfort. Anyway, since before Miami [mediados de marzo]The pain is quite controlled, so I’m happy, but since I haven’t competed for a long time, if it doesn’t work out, one thing is another. Small lesions appear.”
From the emotional to the physical
He was able to compete at the beginning of the year in Australia, but then he couldn’t do it in Indian Wells – one of his favorite venues – and he arrived in Madrid amid difficulties. He says that these days he doesn’t feel “great pain,” so he can play. He will do it after shedding tears in Stuttgart – when he managed to refute Aryna Sabalenka, the number two in the world – and after making a crude confession. “After some checkups in March, the doctors told me that it would be difficult for me to continue my career,” she said in the podcast. The impact of the diagnosis was brutal, but Badosa is a stubborn girl who is not willing to give up.
“I have spoken with countless players who have had problems of this type, like Bianca [Andreescu], Rublev, Khachanov… Even Garbiñe suffered from it when he was young. Obviously they are all different cases, but even for the adductor [el último percance que ha sufrido, una pequeña rotura en Stuttgart] I talked to Aryna. I’m lucky to have a good relationship with them, so I’m trying to get some information. “I just try to stay positive.” “I have cried a lot, but at the same time I have that personality and I tell myself that I have to keep fighting to get ahead. There are days when I don’t wake up very well, but I think this is worth it. If I do this it is because I love this sport”, continues the tennis player from Begur, who this season has played 14 matches, distributed in eight tournaments: six wins and eight losses. The third round signed in Melbourne is her limit.
In any case, if there is a framework that encourages him, it is the Caja Mágica, where last year he progressed to the quarterfinals and in 2021 he unraveled a career cut short until then by depression and anxieties. Today, the trap is physical, and places you in front of an unpleasant reality. But, in the face of adversity, she counterattacks: “Am I going to continue fighting for the great victories? I always. This year is going to be difficult, so I’m looking more long term. If my injury allows me, I will always have that hope and believe in myself; “The day I don’t believe in myself, I won’t continue playing.”
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