Carolina Marin won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio after beating India's PV Sindhu in the women's singles final.

The score line read 19-21, 21-12, 21-15, highlighting the fierce competition between the rivals. Marin thus became the first non-Asian to win a women's singles gold medal in badminton at the Olympics.

With China having dominated the world badminton circuit for the longest time, with some gems popping out of India as well, it is no mean feat for the Spaniard to establish her dominance.

The reigning Olympic champion is also the three time world champion, four time European champion and held the top ranking in the BWF women's singles for 66 weeks.

Her major achievements, apart from the gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, include gold medals at the 2014 Copenhagen World Championships, 2015 Jakarta World Championships and 2018 Nanjing World Championships. She also won the European championships in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 while clinching the bronze medal in European women's team championships in 2016 and 2018.

The initial breakthroughs in her career came when Marin won silver at the 2009 Milan European junior championships and gold at the 2011 Vantaa European Union championships.

In the professional circuit, she really came to her own initially in 2013-14 when she bagged the first gold at London Grand Prix in August that season. She was part of Banga Beats in the inaugural edition of the Indian Badminton League.

Marin became the first European to win a world championship title in 2014 and the youngest European to win the World Championships ever. In 2015, she finished with five super series titles, the world number one BWF ranking and her second world championships.

This set her up nicely for the 2016 Rio Olympics where she pipped PV Sindhu to the post. After winning her fourth European title and third world championships title in 2017-18, she suffered a career threatening ACL injury in 2019-2020.

However, Marin bounced back in style after an eight-month break to win the China Open and reach the semi finals of the Denmark Open.

Marin won the first badminton title of 2021, the Thailand Open Super 1000 event and is now putting in a shift in training to successfully defend the Olympics gold at the Tokyo Olympics this year.

Had the Olympics not been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Marin might have had to miss the Summer Games due to her ACL injury. She now looks in good shape to stake a claim for another Olympic gold.