Olympic and world badminton champion Carolina Marín of Spain retires

Sport

Olympic and world badminton champion Carolina Marín of Spain retires

2026-03-26 22:41 Last Updated At：22:50

MADRID (AP) — Carolina Marín, one of the greatest ever badminton players, retired on Thursday after the Spaniard couldn't fully recover from a third serious knee injury.

Marín, 32, said in a social media post that “my journey in professional badminton has come to an end.”

Marín is the only woman from outside Asia to win the Olympic singles when she won gold at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. She was also the first woman to win three world championships, was ranked No. 1 for a record 66 weeks, and took a record seven European championships.

She has not competed since the 2024 Paris Olympics when she tore the ACL in her right knee for a second time during the semifinals. She was winning that match until she collapsed in agony on the court. Marin tried a knee brace but lasted only two more points. She was too injured to play the bronze medal match.

“I actually did go out while on the court, in Paris in 2024, but we just didn’t know it at that time,” Marín said on Thursday.

She first tore the ACL in her right knee in 2019. She recovered but ruptured the ACL in her left knee and was unable to defend her Olympic title at Tokyo in 2021.

Marin came from behind to beat Olympic champion Li Xuerui in the final of the 2014 worlds, retained the title in 2015 and achieved an unprecedented third crown in 2018. She wasn't match until last year by Akane Yamaguchi.

Marín made the retirement announcement before the European championship to be held in her hometown of Huelva, Spain, next month.

“I wanted us to see each other for one last time on the court," she said, “but not if it meant putting my body at risk.”

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Box Office: ‘Mandalorian and Grogu’ tops charts and ‘Obsession’ grows in second weekend

After nearly seven years away from the big screen, a new Star Wars movie drew healthy but not record-breaking crowds to global theaters this weekend. According to studio estimates on Sunday, “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” made $82 million in ticket sales from 4,300 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. By the end of Monday’s Memorial Day holiday, it’s expected to have earned $102 million domestically and $165 million globally.

It exceeded opening weekend expectations for the movie, a continuation of Disney+ spinoff series “The Mandalorian,” but it’s also on the low end of Disney-era Star Wars releases, closer to “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which made $103 million over the four-day Memorial Day frame in 2018. While “Solo” was considered a disaster, the metrics around “The Mandalorian and Grogu” are a little different.

The production budget for “Solo” was in the $300 million range, while “The Mandalorian and Grogu” was made for significantly less — a reported $165 million, not accounting for marketing and promotion costs. It makes the journey to profitability more likely, especially when factoring in positive audience scores. Although critics were mixed to negative on the movie (it currently carries a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes), ticket buyers overall gave it an A- CinemaScore. Boys under the age of 13 are especially high on the movie: They gave it an A CinemaScore and a perfect five on PostTrak. Parents also gave it a five out of five.

The Jon Favreau-directed movie stars Pedro Pascal as the titular bounty hunter and puts him and his tiny green companion on a mission to save Jabba’s son Rotta the Hutt, who is voiced by Jeremy Allen White.

“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” could also be graded on a bit of a curve because of the streaming component, both that it started as a series, and that it will eventually end up as a value add on Disney+, which was only about a month old when the last Star Wars movie, “The Rise of Skywalker,” debuted in December 2019.

Star Wars as a brand is in a time of transition under its new leadership team of Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan; Earlier this year it was announced that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who produced “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” was stepping down after 13 years. The question for the industry is whether audience interest in Star Wars on the big screen might have cooled slightly, and if next year’s “Star Wars: Starfighter,” starring Ryan Gosling, will provide a definitive answer. Until then, the hope is that strong audience and exit scores will propel word-of-mouth generated enthusiasm in the coming weeks.

Word-of-mouth certainly helped Curry Barker’s relationship horror movie “Obsession” defy the standard box office trajectory and do better business in its second weekend. The Focus Features had an astonishing 30% uptick in ticket sales, earning $22.4 million from 2,655 theaters. The studio, which acquired the microbudget movie for some $15 million, is projecting that it will have made $28.2 million by the end of Monday, bringing its running total to $58.5 million. It snagged the second-place spot, while “Michael” landed in third place with $20 million for the three-day weekend. The Michael Jackson biopic has now earned $782.4 million.

“Obsession” also did better than the new horror movie “Passenger,” a Paramount Pictures release with Melissa Leo, which grossed an estimated $8.7 million from 2,534 locations. It’s expected to earn $10.5 million over its first four days. The movie received poor reviews from both critics (44% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (B- Cinema Score).

The mix of movies this year didn’t hold a candle to last year’s record Memorial Day weekend, which was led by Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.” The overall four-day frame this year will net out around $211 million, down about 36% from last year’s $330 million. It’s also far from the disastrous 2024 Memorial Day weekend box office, a 30-year low, when “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” opened.