“Sports life is a roller coaster, it is very hard to stay on top for a long time”

The Spanish padel player Marta Ortega believes that now, at 29 years old, she has “more maturity” and can “contribute much more” than in 2019, when she reached number one in the world ranking, because then she did what she was “told” and “I didn’t quite feel it”, because “the sporting life is a roller coaster” and “it is very hard to stay at the top for a long time”.

Ortega finishes a new work session at the Pro Padel Coslada club, during the beginning of the season in which he trains six days a week, if there is no tournament, with physical and padel work, to complete a preparation of about 5-7 hours a day.

“We have had a good preseason. When it comes to talking about objectives, I think the first thing is to adapt as quickly as possible and, being very demanding, try to reach the maximum possible weekends. That is, focus a lot on game by game, on adding as many victories as possible, and in the long term, it is in everyone’s mind to try to get into the first four seeds. It is a tough goal, but if we do it well from the beginning, we can achieve it,” he defends in an interview with Europa Press.

And this 2026 she will compete alongside the young Martina Calvo, who was the great revelation of the women’s circuit in 2025, although “she has not yet reached her ceiling” at 17 years old. “He has things very clear, a very high level of maturity for his age, he knows perfectly well what his priorities are, what he wants to do at the academic level, he is very hungry and very eager at the sporting level,” he praises his partner.

“What made me finally opt for it was to create a long-term project, it is what I need most, to have a team for a long time, that is durable, trust in the process and that is long-term,” he explains about what his intention was for this season.

The Madrid native highlights that Calvo “has a lot of self-confidence, a little more disorder, chaos, and that comes in very handy at times of the season, because they give you that excitement and desire when you are more subdued.” “Although I don’t characterize myself as being like that, I think I’m still younger or younger. I think that self-confidence and disorder can be very decisive in moments of very close matches. It’s an advantage, an added value,” she adds.

Ortega hopes that with Calvo he can enjoy a long project, although in current padel “it is complicated” due to wear and tear. “In a season we play between two and three seasons of what we played before. The number of tournaments has multiplied almost threefold, the number of trips and days away from home has quadrupled,” he says.

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“There is a very long and very intense coexistence with your partner or with your team, whether it is a coach, coach or whatever, and that makes the friction come sooner. I think that, many times, we can be impatient. We already have enough experience to know that, when we get together with someone, that is not going to work,” he comments.

Ahead, return to the number one she achieved in 2019, being the youngest player to achieve it at 22 years old. “Being number one is the most you can aspire to in a sport and being part of the national team, I think those are the two objectives, and if there were the Olympic Games it would be great…” he wishes.

“Everyone’s dream when we started to compete in the elite and only having been there, I think it has merit, it has much more merit to be able to maintain it for a long time or achieve it again. Of course, within my goals is to try to achieve it again at some point in my sporting career, but always taking away the negative part, humbly saying ‘there are people who are better than me in this tournament,'” he continues.

For Ortega it is about “assuming that at that moment things were very good, a lot of work was done, but assuming that there are moments in your sporting life that there are people who do it better than you.” “Neither the good ones are so good nor the bad ones are so bad, sporting life you have to learn that it is a roller coaster and that it rewards consistency much more and not the person who was number one and disappeared or things like that, I think it is very hard to stay at the top for a long time,” he reflects.

“I have always been very faithful to my values on and off the court, but through beatings I have learned a lot of things and I have matured. Maybe in 2019 I had more self-confidence, because I was more unconscious, but as an advantage now I will tell you that I have more maturity, more vision of the game, that I can contribute much more. In 2019 I did what they told me many times, I didn’t quite feel it, understand it, but I limited myself to doing what they told me because it was my team and I always die with them,” he acknowledges.

Ortega combined his medical studies and elite sport for years, and graduated in 2021. “I would not have been the person I am today if I had not studied medicine and if I had not played paddle tennis. Focusing only on studying can often be frustrating, sport is an outlet, whether you do it at a professional or amateur level, and sport is health. It is proven that you study much better when you have done sport,” he points out.

“And if you only focus on sport, you miss out on many other things, you have to train yourself as a person, you have to have a plan B, something you can hold onto to live from that moment on and be calm with what happens. The sports mentality makes you better handle moments under pressure, athletes are very used to sacrifice,” he adds.

For Ortega, “high-level and elite sport is not healthy,” because “you constantly go to the limit with your body.” “But it is a very beautiful life, it gives you experiences that you cannot live in any other type of circumstances, wearing the ‘Red’ is a feeling that no matter how much you explain it, no one will understand,” he comments on the selection.

And Ortega sees paddle tennis as “quite close” as an Olympic sport. “It is simply a matter of meeting all the requirements that are needed. There is a bureaucratic, administrative, quite important part and I believe that it is the last little leap we have left to finish putting the sport where we all want it to be. I know that we are advancing by leaps and bounds, what happens is that since they are every four years, it is very difficult to see the results of that work,” he advances.

Finally, Marta Ortega was “very grateful” for the support of “such a big brand” that “bets as much on paddle tennis” as Seagram’s 0.0%. “I always try to surround myself with sponsors who are like family, they showed it to me from the first moment, very comfortable and I really like the people who bet so much on our sport. We are both very hardworking, we seek excellence, we are very perfectionists and we also seek novelty, which I believe is the most important thing,” he concludes.