Pilar Jauregui has been in badminton for more than 6 years and based on a lot of effort has reached various achievements such as the gold medal in the Parapan Am Games 2019 and qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
Each achievement also entails many sacrifices and difficulties, the same ones that lead athletes to value each process and result much more. Jauregui lived difficult moments before participating in the debut of Para badminton in Paralympic Games.
“Even though I didn’t do as well as I wanted, Tokio 2020 has been one of my best moments. It was the most expected because I had to fight the qualification and I had gone through a lot: quarantine, I got sick, etc. Getting out of it all and being able to get to the Paralympics was very important to me.”
As it is well remembered, Tokio 2020 was held in 2021 due to the sanitary measures that various international sports organizations took around the pandemic. Many athletes saw their sports performance diminished due to the quarantines and restrictions to train that were experienced during the first months of the pandemic. Pilar had to live with it and see the different alternatives to do physical training at home, without much space, but with a lot of energy to keep up the pace that had brought her closer to qualifying for the Paralympic dream.
However, the pandemic would not be the only difficulty that Pilar would have prior to the Paralympic Games. When only one event was missing to officially close the qualification period, Jauregui lived other tense moments due to an infection that forced her to make a new pause in her preparation.
“For me it was hard, I had a serious infection. I had to stop for several months. I was afraid that I wouldn’t know if I would play again. I had already experienced being quarantined, at home, and this was not easy because the only thing I could do was rest and get my body to recover. So getting to Tokyo 2020 was the hardest thing. Already being there and competing for me was the best and it was my best moment despite all the difficulties I had gone through. ”
In this time, patience was the best ally for Pilar. A time when resting was obligatory but the mind does not rest. The recovery came and the expected return to competition was successful.
But one of the things that also motivates her in her day to day is to be able to bring the sport to many people. That is why Pilar, together with the Bent But Not Broken Association (bbnb) promote para sport in Peru and their activities include tennis, marathon, surfing, women’s wheelchair basketball and soon they will also include Para badminton.
“The idea of the Association is that everyone does sports and there are no impediments. We are promoting and getting more young people to join. There is already a ‘bbnb’ in Cuzco with a women’s basketball team there and we hope that this will continue to grow.”
Pilar enjoys competing, but also sharing what she knows about the sport so that more people experience all the good and beneficial things that sport brings.
“I really like to be able to share what I know in sport, obviously I still need to learn a lot, but the idea of promoting para sport is one of the things that I will not stop doing and there I have a project with wheelchairs more accessible to everyone. ”
Since she started in the different sports she has practiced, she always sought to summon more people to participate with her and discover that practicing sport is not only a physical activity but goes beyond.
“Sport helped me a lot, gave me a lot of security and taught me to improve myself. There were things I thought I couldn’t do, but now I can quietly do them. I’m not afraid to dare and that’s something I’ve been given the sports I’ve played.”
“Getting involved in sport is breaking with those limitations that we have when we think that we can not do sports, that we must be at home, that we have to see the family. It’s breaking all this and wanting to do something that you like or that suddenly only gives you health, because that’s what sport is: it gives you health, it relaxes you, it gives you a lot of discipline. The idea is that you can do something that you like or that maybe you never dared to do. And that’s where you find your way. ”
Photo Credit: Badminton Photo
