Rafael Nadal is the best Spanish athlete in history. There is no discussion. No other has been able to have such a long career in the elite (he debuted in 2002, at the age of 15; he retires in 2024, at the age of 38), in such a tough individual sport (in tennis there are no changes to rest on the bench, as in team sports); nor has he added such an extensive track record: 22 Grand Slam titles (the second male player in history, after Novak Djokovic, 24), 14 of them at Roland Garros, an Olympic gold and five Davis Cup, in addition to being world number one. for 209 weeks (four years and seven days).
At his side, Pau Gasol’s two NBA rings, his three Olympic medals and a World Cup; Miguel Induráin’s five consecutive Tours; the two Augusta Masters, two British Opens and three Ryders by Severiano Ballesteros; Ángel Nieto’s 12+1 World Cups or the two Euro Cups and a World Cup of the generation of Casillas, Iniesta and Xavi, appear as extraordinarily meritorious, but they cannot compare with Nadal’s brutal display.
With Nadal we have spent hundreds of hours suffering, fighting, losing and, above all, winning. We know by heart his eternal injuries. We can repeat his tics prior to the serve, his gait avoiding the lines, his millimetric arrangement of the bottles in front of his resting chair, and that final pinch of his underwear before beginning the serve routine. We have seen him with capri pants below the knee (how horrible!) and with his elegant thirty-something clothes; with long hair and growing thinning; without a girlfriend, with a girlfriend, with a wife, with a child… We have grown up with him. He’s one of ours.
But, be careful, let’s not fool ourselves, we don’t know him in his private world. He belongs to a Balearic family clan jealous of his privacy; and his professional environment is rocky and very defensive of his leader. Therefore, when he entered into difficult terrain—the publicized agreement to announce him as ambassador of Saudi Arabia or his nebulous opinions on feminism, for example—we discovered that each of us had built a unique, perfect Nadal, tailored to our needs. from the empathy generated by his play on the limit and his elegant sportsmanship.
My Rafa Nadal is admirable in sports, but he arouses emotion in me personally. I can imagine what he has had to endure, and I see a life of enormous success, but not an enviable life. Let’s remember. Rafael was molded by his uncle Toni Nadal, a believer in the Stoic school of learning through suffering. When the rest of the students went home after classes, Rafael stayed sweeping or collecting the balls. Always the last to return home. “Toni is the last person in the world to offer me comfort; “He criticizes me even when I win,” he told John Carlin for his book Rafa. my story.
“Mother’s boy,” his coach-uncle called him, who has always defended that this formative toughness is what has built his privileged mind, capable of always outlasting his rival. “The head is everything in tennis; to hold on, to want to win more than the opponent,” says Toni. And it seems that his message has stuck: “The closer to the precipice I am,” Rafael defends, “the more exalted I feel.” You pay a price for a life like this. The tennis player suffers alone, for hours and hours, against friends or enemies, against the wind, in the heat, in the cold, hitting the balls over and over again. There are thousands who fail every year when trying to reach the elite. Nadal reached the summit in 2005 with his first Roland Garros, and has continued there for almost two decades enduring chronic pain and superhuman efforts.
“I know I won’t be a happy man when it’s over,” he told Carlin, “and I want to make the most of it while it lasts.” With this phrase alone, you can understand this long final agony that Nadal has endured these months before closing his career. He is going to have to learn to live without that daily adrenaline, without that vital mission that was instilled in him since he was a child. Without that emotion of something as simple and at the same time as demanding as passing the ball over the net again and again, until doing it one more time than the opponent on duty. Without that fight between three giants with Djokovic and Federer, which has lasted 20 years on the court, but which will always remain in history.
Rafael Nadal is the best Spanish athlete in history. There is no discussion. Now it’s his turn to live and enjoy like a normal guy. His superhero sword, his racket, is already intended for friendly or playful tasks, not for battles with other contenders for the throne. He has built an extraordinary legacy, and I hope he makes it grow, from common sense, with the same empathy and complicity with which he had us all hooked in front of the television.
Alex Martínez Roig He directed the Sports section between 1987 and 1993.
