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Page 1For safety’s sake: Saying goodbye to the king
Page 2Will he say it?
He waves once more to the crowd, who really tried everything to keep him in the game. But neither the roar under the closed roof of the centre court, nor the constant “Come on Rafa!“-Calls or unfair cheering over the opponents’ mistakes could have helped. Rafael Nadal, the king of the red clay at Roland Garros, has been eliminated from the Olympic tennis tournament. On Monday in the singles, and this Wednesday evening in the doubles as well. There will be no third Olympic victory, and so he quickly disappears through the small door to the changing rooms with his young but already very successful partner Carlos Alcaraz. It is more than uncertain whether he will ever return to this court where he made sports history.
There are not many athletes who are given monuments when they are still alive. They erected a statue for Nadal in Paris three years ago, when he was still playing at the height of his art. It stands in Roland Garros just behind the entrance, just a few meters from the legendary Center Court. The work of the Spanish sculptor Jordi Diez Fernandez looks like an anatomical drawing cast in metal, every muscle, even every single one of the matador from Manacor’s hairs, which have become increasingly thin over the years, has been dissected, his mouth open to scream. A tennis terminator, with both legs in the air, pulling off one of his forehand whips. At his feet, the dates of his 14 Grand Slam victories on this court are recorded on glass. The last one, from 2022, had to be added – Nadal had once again outsmarted his own museum-worthy status.
Attention, his terrain
On this, perhaps his last match day, his fans make a pilgrimage to the statue, many of them having their photo taken with the Spanish flag. But the monument is not just a tribute to an athlete who has played in more finals on the legendary Court Philippe-Chatrier than any other tennis player before him. It is also a warning to his opponents: be careful, you are now entering his territory!
Over the years, the idol of the Spaniards has also become a Parisian of hearts. If no Frenchman can win the tournament (the last one was Yannick Noah more than 40 years ago), then at least the greatest clay court player of all time should reign supreme here. And that is certainly Nadal, who once remained undefeated on the surface for 81 matches in a row.
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Further
The opening ceremony of the games showed how much the Mallorca-born man is revered here and throughout France. At the end, when everyone was wondering who would be allowed to light the Olympic flame, Zinédine Zidane took the torch. But he, Zizou, the French football legend, passed it on – to Nadal. On a boat, now a very much alive and obviously very moved statue himself, he held the torch and transported it, accompanied by other world stars of sport, to its final destination, the Tuileries. He could never thank Paris and France enough “for giving me this honor,” Nadal later said.
But he can no longer be the formidable figure he cut on the Seine in his bright red jacket with yellow cuffs on the sleeves on the court, in the now iconic red Spain T-shirt with yellow cuffs. In the first round of the Olympic singles tournament, he drove the Hungarian Márton Fucsovics across the court with great speed, precision and perfect timing until the latter was hanging on the ropes like a boxer and had to put an ice roll on his neck during the short break at the change of ends. If Nadal can still play like that, why should his liaison with Paris ever end? But in the second singles match, you can already see every one of his 38 years of life; his eternal rival Novak Đoković, whom he is facing for the incredible 60th time, is mercilessly preparing them. After the almost humiliating two-set defeat, the Serb said succinctly: “You can see that his movements have been limited due to his injuries in recent years. But when he had the ball, he hit it very well.”
The image that has been familiar for over a decade: Rafael Nadal waits on his court in Paris to see what his opponent will do. © Sebastian Wells/ZEIT ONLINE
Nadal has played an incredible 1,410 games since he turned professional at the age of 15, having initially preferred to play football; he has won 1,152 of them. But his injury story also began early – in 2004 he had to take a three-month break due to a stress fracture in his metatarsal bone. A year later, his left foot was diagnosed with Müller-Weiss syndrome, in which the bone tissue of the scaphoid dies. Cause: unknown. Special insoles protected him from an early end to his career. His foot only had to be operated on in 2021.
By then, however, he already had problems with other parts of his body that are essential for tennis players, from his knee to his hip to his hand. At first, it was rumored that his uncle Toni was training him too hard. But Nadal is simply paying the price for his energy-sapping style of play, all the long baseline battles in which he has to move his 85 kilograms of body weight, which is not exactly suitable for cross-country skiing. But the dreaded spin of his forehand shots, with which he accelerates the ball to more than 5,000 revolutions per minute (Roger Federer barely managed half that), also has its price. After the 2023 Australian Open, Nadal was injured again, ended a year without a tournament win for the first time in two decades and plummeted to 670th place in the world rankings.
He waves once more to the crowd, who really tried everything to keep him in the game. But neither the roar under the closed roof of the centre court, nor the constant “Come on Rafa!“-Calls or unfair cheering over the opponents’ mistakes could have helped. Rafael Nadal, the king of the red clay at Roland Garros, has been eliminated from the Olympic tennis tournament. On Monday in the singles, and this Wednesday evening in the doubles as well. There will be no third Olympic victory, and so he quickly disappears through the small door to the changing rooms with his young but already very successful partner Carlos Alcaraz. It is more than uncertain whether he will ever return to this court where he made sports history.
