The story of how Fernando Rivas, Carolina Marin's coach, triggered a French revolution in Badminton
'No, tengo a Carolina.' No, I have Carolina.
Said at speed in Spanish, this was like Shashi Kapoor's 'Mere pass Maa hai' mic-drop moment from the movie, Deewar. This was in response to being asked about Chinese champions in badminton.
Fernando Rivas, the famously pathbreaking badminton coach of Carolina Marin, who took her to an Olympic title at Rio, and to a World Championship final after two ACL surgeries (she has 3 titles and 1 silver from 2014 – 2023), and back to the brink of an Olympic final before injury cruelly stopped her at the 2024 Games, had been speaking at the Yonex Legends Series right before Paris.
He recalled the first stirrings of ambition that brought unprecedented success to a completely badminton-unknown nation, Spain. Now, over the years, Rivas, with multiple PhDs in topics central to sport but also skimming its periphery, has gone on to introduce new doctrines in elite training and high performance. This last week he announced he will move on from leading the French evolution in badminton, a sport that's most benefitted from Paris hosting 2024. Rivas worked with the French for three years and has put them on such a firm footing in leveraging sports science to achieve peak performance, that Europe is suddenly looking like an exciting, heaving hotbed of talent in a sport with its heartbeat in Asia.
Rivas' announcement, after cordially ending the stint with the French, ended cryptically. 'It's time to return home where new and exciting projects await,' he wrote. Surely, 32-year-old Super Marin wasn't planning yet another comeback – though no one would be surprised if she did. But 'it's time to return….' had riffs off 'No, tengo a Carolina' (No…I have Carolina to turn into champion) from all those years ago.
Rivas had been watching an Olympic men's doubles final – though it's not clear if this was Athens or Beijing or London. 'I was actually watching a men's doubles match, which was amazing. But in the middle of the third set, I told my colleague 'I have to be there. I have to be in the Olympic final,'' the Spaniard Shifu told the Legends Series. The colleague was gobsmacked. 'And she asked, 'Are you going to coach the Chinese?'' given their predominance in Olympic finals back then. Rivas calmly declared, 'No, I have Carolina'.'
Along with Pullela Gopichand, Tai Tzu-ying's coach, Lai Chien-cheng and Ratchanok's longtime mentor Patapol Ngernsrisuk, Rivas formed a formidable counter to the Chinese women's singles domination of a decade and half ago. While there's lots of guessing about what exciting projects could possibly beckon Rivas back home ('It's time to…' is fairly ominous if there's another Marin, looming on the horizon), but what Rivas has also helped kickstart hugely is the French surge. 'A major European power that will become a global force,' Rivas declared soon after Thom Giquel and Delphine Delrue's Indonesia Open triumph (like winning a tennis Slam) in mixed doubles.
Rivas had scribbled that he fondly remembered Giquel and Delrue's first European championship gold, followed by women's doubles victory of Anne Tran and Margot Lambert, a partnership whose dedication and development filled him with particular pride.
Even as Marin healed from a second busted knee, Rivas had been busy putting up the French scaffolding that ensured they ended with most medals at the last European Championships. Rivas would call 'valuable', Toma Jr Popov's 'against the odds qualification for Paris', as well as Alex Lanier's first ever Super Series victory in 2025. 'The bittersweet taste of the 2023 European mixed team championship silver in Aire-sur-la-lys lingers, where we nearly beat Denmark in a thrilling match,' Rivas would write.
At the Paris World Championships in the last week of August, Rivas will throw his last dice for the French, looking for a world's medal for the first time since Chinese-origin Pi Hongyan won at Hyderabad in 2009.
It's not that Denmark is sliding, though it doesn't boast the quality across categories. Kenneth Larsen, now with Malaysia, is plotting quite an upsurge in Asia, and Anders Antonsen ensures that after Viktor Axelsen (who himself ain't quite done yet), the crowns are not directly headed to the likes of Li Shifeng and Kunlavut Vitidsarn. But you had to be stuck in the past to not notice how France are on the rise – and with a fairly steady, sustained program that's not a one-off. They're in here for the long haul, and Denmark felt the sting when pushed in the Euro finals, though 8 medals to top the charts including two titles of 5, was the arrival of a new power in town, with English badminton waning.
Former French doubles shuttler, a World No 13 in his day, Vincent Laigle, leads the general direction and worked closely with Rivas who helped standardise elite performance after the French built uniformity in systems starting 2008. At the Paris Worlds in two months, Rivas and the team has ensured 15 French contenders will be in action, and fighting for podiums, not just making host numbers.
Just like for Marin, Rivas deployed strategic growth charts that have seen Lanier and Delrue-Giquel win a Super 750 and Super 1000 title in recent times. But French badminton was always in an advanced orbit. India's Paralympics world champion Pramod Bhagat recalled the sophisticated drills that were at play for agility, strengthening and simply to improve reflex reactions. Giquel's recovery from a scary injury a few years ago had some cutting edge tech.
But it was Rivas' independent streak, and ingenuity not unlike Gopichand, Lai chien and Patapol, that was crucial. Quite simply, he didn't believe in aping the Asians and Chinese blindly. Cyrille Gombrowicz, a director at French Federation, FFBaD, had noted, 'I thank Fernando Rivas for the direction he has greatly contributed to defining and implementing in the service of high performance. I remember that we will not succeed in beating the Asians by copying their method but by asserting our own singularity. The holistic approach to performance materializing in our own ecosystem is his legacy.'
At Los Angeles, the French will likely compete not just as former Olympic hosts, but aim at badminton titles. No one quite expected Marin to be the force she eventually turned out to be till she claimed her first world crown at Copenhagen in 2014. It's unclear yet if Spain has unearthed more shuttlers like her, though the country is ambitiously challenging the might of NBA, nothing less, with a new basketball league that will stop talent drain to America. Their badminton chapter is far from done, as long as Rivas is back in the mix.
China has little to worry about in the immediate future. But a little further down the timeline, things get a little ominous with the new-Denmark building up in France. Rivas raised Marin to slay Asian might and largely succeeded. Now in France, his blueprint gets 3D printed, scaled up and scaling the peaks being imminent. Le crack, the French called him in their testimonials – a wizard, a bit of a genius.
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