Coming back well is not easy. She said it Andres Calamaro before returning from the dead with that live album accompanied by the unoriginal Bersuit in its title: ‘The Return’. Rafael Nadal is back for one last dance. He will say goodbye on the slopes, as he wanted. “I don’t deserve to retire at a press conference“, he said when announcing that he would play, for now, one more year.
Nadal could have traveled around the circuit dressed in civilian clothes to receive the love of the fans. Instead, only he knows the physical and mental sacrifices he has endured this year to give himself another chance at the elite.
The public will be able to pay him the tribute he deserves in each tournament and each grand slam as an active tennis player. On the court. That’s how Rafa wanted it, and that’s how it will be. He is not the first top-level athlete to return when everything seemed to be over.. Others did it with varying success. Nadal will celebrate 38 years playing, God willing, on the sacred land of Roland Garros. The same land that will host the Paris 2024 Olympic tennis tournament.
And here is the key to everything. This double date is what has led Rafa to fight for another year in the belief that he can achieve it. He has proven so many times that he could reach that unreturnable ball; that we all want to believe is possible. That he can win again. And a Spanish Nadal-Alcaraz double in the Games? Rafa does not want to give up another Olympic gold.
Rafael Nadal, the best of all time
Nadal is the best Spanish athlete of all time. His retirement in 2024, whether he has won a title or not, will mark the end of the two best decades of Spanish sport.. He has led a generation born in the 80s that has achieved all possible successes: soccer World Cup and European Championships, basketball World Cups, tennis and many others.
But it’s not just the victories, that too. Nadal, Gasol, footballers like Torres or Iniesta have been our first great icons of world sport. They are as or more famous in the rest of the countries of the world than here. They no longer belong only to us Spaniards. They have been and are our best ambassadors in this turbulent beginning of the century.
The return of Rafael Nadal is the latest gift from this legendary athlete, capable of winning 22 majors while living alongside the best generation of tennis players in the history of this sport: Roger Federer (20) and Novak Djkovich (24). Yeah Nadal is capable of biting his fifteenth Musketeers Cup in Paris It is a mystery that no one can solve right now. If it does, His return will be another page written in gold letters in the history of world sports.. And no one is going to take that hope away from us, at least until spring arrives.
With Nadal the best of ourselves returns at a time when there are few illusions to cling to. With Nadal the example of what we have always wanted to transmit returns: effort, quality, sacrifice, emotion and recognition of the rival. With Nadal, the early mornings in front of the television in Melbourne or New York return, and the June afternoons glued to the ground of Roland Garros. With Nadal the best of ourselves goes; he’s leaving the sublimation of the Spanish picaresque – the right-handed man who played with his left hand – and the golden era of Spanish sport is extinguished, waiting for another generation to take over.
2024-01-01 04:25:14
#return #Rafael #Nadal
