The problem with Nadal is that everyone is tired of bringing flowers to the cemetery | Relief
The word “exhaustion” and we all contributed to this: the press, sponsors, colleagues on the circuit, tournaments… Even David Ferrer, the Davis Cup captain, said after the defeat to Holland that he noticed that Rafa Nadal was too tired. Partially overwhelmed by external expectations. The problem is obviously not with this week or this competition. Nadal’s problem is that the agony lasted too long And? we’re not used to this for so long to treat Nadal with pain, but with joy, overcoming, constantly challenging limitations.
Can this be done differently? It’s impossible to know. I suppose Nadal might have been less cryptic in his statements since late last year… but I also believe that when you enjoy your work like Nadal he enjoyed his it’s hard to close the doors happily. Nadal began the season by declaring that it would “almost certainly” be his last, he received tribute in Madrid when he lost to Jiri Lehecka and suddenly, for no more obvious reason than the high level of training, he chose to change teams. intelligence.
Whether it was because of the intuition of light at the end of the tunnel or because of the grotesqueness of the tribute at Caha Magica, with those flags not wanting to come down, and with it being very late at night and the audience clearly confused, the fact is that Nadal and his entourage Rome asked that this scene not be repeated.. And Roma complied, although they really wanted to say goodbye to the ten-time tournament winner in style. The first triumphs came in 2005 and 2006, after he played in the two best matches of his career against Guillermo Coria and a certain Roger Federer.
Nor did he want Roland Garros to pay him the tribute that the organization of the Olympic Games deservedly paid him. At that time, we still didn’t know for sure whether Rafa would retire or not. Then Djokovic arrived and more or less clarified everything. The announcement resulted in logical expressions of condolences.the eternal repetition of the best moments, posthumous books and heroic documentaries. It’s just that Nadal’s departure was not a happy one. something like Toni KroosBut the pain was visible in every statementin each explanation: “My body just doesn’t allow it.”
More pain than we could bear
And it’s true that already We knew this body would break. We knew this from a very serious injury in 2005 and many others that followed. Rafa Nadal even said that he never went a day without taking anti-inflammatory drugs. His struggle has been one of constant battle with pain and, he says, constant improvement. So, we are used to seeing Raf as a video game hero whose energy suddenly drops, but after a short time he manages to raise it. A number that never ends.
It’s just that He was, of course, exhausted, like Federer, or Murray, or Djokovic, who would soon be exhausted.. And, aside from Tuesday’s ceremony fiasco, the truth is that we were all getting a little jaded about bringing flowers to the cemetery:Nadal was saturatedhis companions and his captain were saturatedwho went to Malaga to win the Davis Cup, even the crowd was saturated, who knew, in some way, that the tribute would deprive them of more evenings and evenings of splendor, many of which they had probably already paid for.
Nadal appeared in our sports life like a hurricane of vitality. David Foster Wallace, in his famous essay on the 2006 Wimbledon final, called him “Dionysus” compared to the “Apollo” that Federer would have been. For those who don’t know too much about Greek mythology – the only thing missing is Dionysus – the image of pleasure, hunger, excess. Apollo, rationality, elegance, science. In short, Nadal was a hungry and overzealous competitor. I don’t know to what extent Foster Wallace’s reading led to many of the subsequent misunderstandings, but it may have been accurate at the time.
And, in any case, it is the one that remains in our hearts. Wild champion, impossible. Whoever loses the first two sets to Medvedev, it is unknown how he will survive the third… and ultimately win the Australian Open at 35 and a half years old in five sets. If there’s anything to celebrate, it’s this. Celebrating grief, and especially this kind of continuous grief, will eventually upset someone.. Time will put things in their place naturally, without forcing them. It’s best to do something else now. For example, competitive tennis, which is what brought us here.