Rafael Nadal Parera – born in Manacor in 1986 – heard before turning 19 that he would live with pain: in 2005 he was diagnosed with Müller-Weiss disease in the left foot: “A rare condition of the foot characterized by deformity of the scaphoid bone (also known as the navicular bone) and early-onset degenerative arthritis (wear and tear) of the joints surrounding the bones of the foot,” as defined by the National Organization for Rare Diseases. That injury chronic would not allow him to compete at the highest level.
Then an idea, as happens in the movie “The Origin”, got into the head of Nadal: High performance sport is not healthy. That idea was expressed in “Rafamy story”, the biography that the Manacorí wrote with John Carlin in 2011. But there was a “solution”: “The fragility of the body strengthened my mind.”
Nadal won again and again… he got injured again and again
In 2021, at 35 years old, he had 20 Grand Slam tournaments (he was tied with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic as the most winners) when Müller-Weiss It became unbearable and he had to stop. Between June of that year and January 2022, the Manacorí played two games.
The return had a moment in the final of the 2022 Australian Open that no one wants to forget: Daniil Medvedev was two sets up, 3-2 and had triple break point in favor against Nadal. I couldn’t find the origin, the first time he said it except to Luis Enrique at Euro 2020 quoting him: “He says Nadal You have to have a memory like a fish and he’s right. If you miss a ball, there is no use thinking about that ball, you have to go for the next one.”
That fish memory, that letting go of what happened to go for the next thing marked the career of Nadal. He marked it that day in Australia, when he came back in the match against Medvedev and gave away one of his last epic battles. It also made him “forget” about what he had gained to go for the next thing.
Because Carlos Moyá, his last coach and an unforgettable former player who won Roland Garros and was No. 1 in the world, he said that in Rafa It surprised him. That when he (Moyá) had reached those places that were so aspirational and for so few, he connected with the satisfaction of what he had achieved, with pleasure and there was something that relaxed him. But Nadal I thought that the next day I had to train on grass to play at Wimbledon. Nadal won Roland Garros for the 14th time in 2022 and a few weeks later he was playing in the Wimbledon quarterfinals against Taylor Fritz. At the start of the game, he had a seven-millimeter tear in one of his abdominal muscles.
A decade earlier, also in the quarterfinals of the 2011 Australian Open, Rafa was playing against David Ferrer, he had an injury to the hamstrings in his left leg and shouted to his uncle Toni, his coach at the time: ” “I’ve broken my fibers, for sure.” From the box they asked him to retire: “Toni, I’m in the Australian quarterfinals and I’m not going to retire at all,” he replied. Nadal.
We return to Wimbledon 2022 and the order to Rafa It comes from his father Sebastián. They are clear images and you can search them on YouTube: it tells you to go away, to give up. He is 36 years old, he is not going to listen to the pain and he is going to win the game. Rafa Not only will he have to abandon Wimbledon (he gave a WO against Nick Kyrgios, who played in the final against Djokovic) but that will be the last major tournament of the Fiera. He will never again win a title or reach decisive positions in important tournaments.
And Nadal If you had taken care of yourself in 2022, where you also made risky calendar decisions, would you have been able to play more? Would we continue to enjoy it instead of clinging to what excited and inspired us in the past? Recently, a psychologist who works in high performance explained to me that athletes must be helped to distinguish between discomfort and pain. The high-performance athlete gets used to playing with discomfort and Rafael Nadal He got used to playing with pain.
* Francisco Arcuri. Graduate in Social Communication. He worked for 8 years at ESPN, where he covered the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. He wrote a chapter in the book “The Sacred Game. Mindfulness and well-being for life and sport.” He hosts the interview podcast “Human Conversations.”
IG: @panchoarcuri.
