Rafa Nadal’s last great challenge: knowing how to retire

They also say that during that time he relied -among others- on Rafael Nadala close friend in the distance emerged from that common work of ambassadors of Spanish sport to the world that they have exercised during their legendary careers. Nobody like them in our country has understood the scope of their competitiveness and the importance of their career footprint in the way they have. When they speak, they carry a country on their shoulders, because they project it to the world with their rights and their baskets. With your word.

Gasol set his retirement on deferred, stretched his career beyond its limits to serve himself a great Olympic pin, to say goodbye as his legend deserved. Thursday, Rafael Nadal announced that it will do the same and he even verbalized it as such, although he said he felt uncomfortable in that confession. “I don’t deserve to end up like this“, he said when asked why the point he was drawing in his career was a full stop, instead of a full stop.

His physique and his head

Several things can be deduced from his decision to end the season –although he left the door slightly open to the Davis Cup, in November– and set his retirement for the year 2024. The first, written remains, that can’t bear the thought of retiring from a stool from his academy in Manacor. Second, that she still genuinely believes that she still has some gas left in the tank. And the third, that his head continues to demand tennis, although now he has announced that she will be a few months without training, detoxifying his mind and healing his physique.

And it does not follow, but at least it is intuited, that Nadal wants to take advantage of these sabbatical months to rehearse what the Rafa of the future will be like, that of the next 50 or 70 years that he has left to live. Prepare for the immersion in the post-competitive life that has been so difficult for other legends of the sport. There is his friend Gasol, but also many other examples. Michael Jordan returned to the courts twice, Iker Casillas has become a tiktoker with a teenage aroma, others ended really badly, many others enjoy a full and happy life without having to go out to train every day. Each one manages it as best he can.

The problem now facing Nadal is that he must fight against his own essence as a sports idol. Uncle Toni taught him to be a competitive animal, but only he himself can learn to stop being so now that the end is near.. And Rafa, like every great successful person, wants to die – sportingly as she has lived. If Federer’s elegance slipped between each frame of his retirement video, Nadal is expected to put an end to it on the clay of Roland Garros, perhaps in the Games, having to be connected to an oxygen cylinder in the instant after connecting the right hand that gives him the last of his abundant and glorious triumphs.

“One More Effort”

“It is always worth making one more effort, it has been my philosophy and I maintain it,” he recalled. Going down in history as the man with the most Grand Slams is no longer in his hand. Novak Djokovic, with whom he is tied at 22 titles, seems to be much more capable today to increase the number and leave the Balearic Islands in second place all-time. Although with him, it is well known, nothing can ever be ruled out. He is the first to know. And he loves it. For this reason, this way of saying goodbye and leaving a gap, even a minimal one, until 2025.

“A stage will come to an end next year in which I think we have been very happy, we have enjoyed many moments that we did not imagine. And, from there, I will start another stage in life that does not have to be less happy“. They sounded like the words of a man defeated by time announcing the last death rattle of his sporting life before facing the final vertigo of retirement.

You already know from your friend Gasol that this drink is not always easy. But it comes to everyone. And he will have to learn to digest it.