Madrid's Return to the Olympics Ends in Disappointment

The national table tennis team, Marcos Madrid Mantilla, finished his participation in the round of 32 of the men's individual table tennis at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Saturday night.

The man from Puebla, who made his debut in Rio 2016, fell in his first game against German Dimitrij Ovtcharov, a six-time Olympic medalist, by a score of 4-0 with partial scores of 11-3, 11-7, 11-3 and 11-5.

“It was difficult because I expected much more than I could develop, a very close game with his serve, his tactics, and maybe I put pressure on myself sometimes, some direct mistakes, I wanted to secure, but he took the lead,” he commented.

“We have to continue working more and more, much more specifically in what is the mental part; now these are details that we possibly neglect, or we are not more insistent,” he said after the match held at the South Paris Arena.

Marcos Madrid expressed the contrast of his feelings, as he highlighted his happiness after returning to the Olympic Games after eight years of absence, after being left out of Tokyo 2020.

“I felt happy to be here, it took me many years to return again, I would have liked to have a better match, but that's how it happened, and we will continue learning,” he said.

After being a medalist at the Central American and Caribbean Games San Salvador 2023 and at the Pan American Games Santiago 2023, Madrid assured that his perseverance led him to close his second Olympic cycle in Paris 2024.

“It was a cycle that at first I saw as difficult, I thought I was not going to achieve it because I did not have the results I wanted, in the world ranking I was going down it became complicated, but the work and discipline that gives me day to day I know that things can be achieved, that is the learning that the more consistent you are is when you achieve the objectives,” he mentioned.