VEGA Maria Paulina

General
MOVE TO EUROPE
In 2017 she left her career as a kinesiologist in Chile and moved to Europe to focus full-time on table tennis. She has played table tennis in Spain, Germany and Austria. "I made up my mind late to come to Europe. Before I studied and I was always there [Europe] with table tennis, half and half. I felt the need to take another step and take more risks to continue growing. A team from Spain contacted me and I spent the first season with them. It was really lucky. In Spain they were all nice to me and I'm very thankful. They opened the doors for me to play at the European level." (latercera.com, 01 Aug 2020; chile.as.com, 25 Jan 2021)

OLYMPIC POSTPONEMENT
She says the one-year postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been beneficial for her to develop her game. She was unable to return to her base in Spain when the lockdown was announced in 2020, so instead moved to Germany where she has been based at the Topspin Sport Tischtennis Centre in Bad Aibling, Germany. "I was in Spain, [but] due to the pandemic, I went to Germany to a training centre and I haven't left since. I have been practically locked down there, training. The centre has tables, bedrooms, so it's perfect to me to reach my 200%. The truth is the pandemic was beneficial for me because I had a chance otherwise I wouldn't have had. This time has been quite hard, because as there are no competitions, we have been able to make a lot of changes, put loads and try paddle variations, which normally is not easy between so many tournaments." (latercera.com, 01 Aug 2020; biobiochile.cl, 18 Apr 2021)

LONDON DISAPPOINTMENT
The lowest point in her career was missing out on qualification for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which she says also affected her four years later when she again missing out during the qualification process for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. "London was the only time in which I said, 'Enough is enough'. It hurt me so much that I felt that I had lost a loved one. It was a kind of mourning that I was experiencing. I lost 14-12 in the last set against an experienced Venezuelan player. So, it was hard to finish two points short of qualifying. I had to work a lot and I think for Rio 2016 it was hard for me to overcome that." (chile.as.com, 25 Jan 2021)