In her characteristic combative style, just after she’d won her quarterfinal over Aya Ohori, Carolina Marin stated she was looking forward to the semifinal with defending champion Chen Yu Fei. At the time, the other quarterfinal between Chen and He Bing Jiao was still going on. Yet, it was a statement of Marin’s intent that she wanted to regain the Olympic gold that was hers in 2016 before it was won by Chen in 2021.

“It means a lot (to make the semifinals), of course,” Marin said, “If I face Chen Yu Fei … I remember in Rio 2016, I played the semifinals against Li Xuerui, she was the winner at London 2012, and she had to defend her gold medal. If I play Chen tomorrow it will be the same – I want to show her that I came here to win a medal and maybe she has something in her mind that she has to defend her gold from Tokyo. This battle, this mental battle, is going to be really important.”

And if she faced He instead?

“I don’t care, let’s see who will win and I will be ready for that.”

Marin had come through a close previous encounter, and was keen to put in a more ruthless performance today, and that she did. Ohori couldn’t stand up to the pace and precision of the Spaniard and fell 21-13 21-14.

“I’m happy and proud of myself, because the day before yesterday I had a difficult match (against Beiwen Zhang). I put more focus on the things I shouldn’t have in that match. Today from the beginning I wanted to keep the focus on the things I wanted to improve. This is how I show on court and it was really important to maintain the focus in the way that I wanted.”

As it turned out, Marin will face He instead of Chen, after He upstaged the defending champion 21-16 21-17 to make her second successive Olympic semifinals.

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