PARIS: Mexican badminton player Luis Ramon Garrido bumped into China’s twice goal medallist Lin Dan in the Paris Olympic Village on Friday, rekindling memories of his harrowing journey since the pair last met in the years before the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Garrido was ranked inside the top 50 in the world and qualified for Rio but then he did not play competitive badminton for four years after a kidney disease and eight knee surgeries.
“I almost lost my life in 2015,” the 28-year-old told the Olympic news service yesterday.
“I got an illness called rhabdomyolysis. It’s like I was losing the kidneys. They were not processing everything, so I was peeing blood every day.”
Garrido was even forced to move to Spain and lived with a specialist doctor for four months. He began to rediscover his love of badminton but then suffered the first of several knee injuries in 2018.
“I destroyed my right knee,” he said. “I destroyed everything: the patella and tendon, the knee ligaments, two meniscuses. So it was pretty painful – not only physically, but also mentally.”
Eight knee surgeries followed over the next four years.
“I thought about retiring in 2022 but I couldn’t get the Olympic dream out of my mind,” he said.
“I know that I’m not going to win a medal, and this is not to be pessimistic or negative, it is just the truth.” — dpa
“It doesn’t matter who’s in front of me. Thinking about the whole process, it’s just a dream to be here.” — dpa
