“I’m not going to fool you: today I’m a little dead, really …”.
After three weeks enclosed within four walls, the Spanish Paula Badosa (New York, 23 years old) picks up the phone from Melbourne and recounts the unpleasant episode he has experienced since landing there. She was one of 72 tennis players who traveled on one of the three flights contaminated that he chartered the Australian Open organization and seven days after arriving in the country, like his coach, Javier Martí, tested positive for the covid. What was to be a strict quarantine, with the possibility of going out for five hours a day to train, became a stricter one, with no option of stepping outside; then came the symptoms, and consequently the transfer to a medicalized hotel. In total, 21 days. And on Thursday, finally, the authorities gave him the green light and the first thing he did was go to Melbourne Park to rally at dawn, despite the beating and the scare in the body.
“We went to those hours for the euphoria, because we needed to breathe and feel free again. Of course, the feeling was very strange because I was half dizzy ”, she tells about a few days that, for better and for worse, she will never forget. Badosa does not question the substance, but the forms. He says he understands the rigidity of Australian protocol, but somehow the Grand Slam organization didn’t tell them the whole movie before they traveled. “It was a nightmare. They treated me as if I were a criminal: they transferred me from one hotel to another, escorted by police officers, a letter of arrest … Yesterday, when we left, a criminal judge … I said to myself: ‘let’s see, I’ve come here to play tennis ‘and I felt a lot of pressure. I’ve missed a little more empathy. I know I have a virus that is dangerous, but I am locked up and following the rules, ”she continues.
“He had two policemen at the door and he was forbidden to open it; I didn’t have a window to breathe a little; There has been a lack of communication with the doctors… In the end, it was in the hands of the government and everything has been very complicated, ”laments the tennis player (67th in the world) in a speech that highlights Australia’s rigorous procedure and that, at the same time , explains the success of the oceanic country in containing the coronavirus.
The athlete understands this, but regrets that during the confinement she did not have the minimum means to exercise: “Neither material, nor a stationary bike… He did what he could: sit-ups, push-ups, weights with bottles. All very homemade. How am I going to compete against those who have been training daily, two or three hours for two weeks? I will start competing with four or five workouts. It is surreal. In these three weeks that I have lost, your body loses a lot ”.
Speak Badosa of grievances. That some were able to have these means and others not: “There are some who have been able to prepare and think about tennis, and others are doing something completely different, thinking about not injuring ourselves more than in another story. I don’t attack them, but that’s the way it is ”. Also, that perhaps the Open should not have been held now (it starts on Monday) despite the fact that the players and the organization are going to make cash and the system continues to bill: “That the effort is very great and we appreciate it? Yes, but the reality is that they earn much more than any of us can earn here. It was clear that there was going to be some positive, and they should have raised better conditions to attend to the cases. That is my complaint. We go where they take us, but let it be done well ”, he explains.
The 67th in the world – quoted in the first round with Liudmila Samsonova – insists on the physical toll, and also on the mental one. “In general, I have endured quite well, but I have gone through many emotions and I have lived many moments of anxiety, because I am also very anxious and very active. It was a shock. Normally, when you’re like this you go for a walk, but in my case I couldn’t, it was horrible. The only thing I could do to relax was take a cold shower or listen to music. “
In any case, he trusts that these 21 days of adversity will stimulate him and make him stronger on the track. After winning the Junior Roland Garros in 2015 and then going through a complicated stage in which her head was inflated with birds – she was compared to the Russian Maria Sharapova and she expressed in this newspaper that she suffered from depression -, last year she gave a swerve and his career began to take off. He reached the eighth of Paris and 2021 had been marked as a turning point.
“It is clear that this slows you down a bit, but I hope the physical will hold me. The objectives are still there. I had made a long preseason and physical changes, and I felt I had options to do things, “he says through the videoconference when the clock already announces the night in Melbourne.
