“They burned my nerves, blocked my tendons”, Del Potro recounts his injuries and considers prosthesis

Juan Martin Del Potro is not asking for much for the last match of his career, December 1 against Novak Djokovic. Not even a victory. No. Just “have one, two or three hours where my leg leaves me in peace”. Weighed down by injuries and pain, the Argentinian returned to his painful daily life in a video published on his Instagram account. A little over ten minutes of making you cry, wondering if the little moving music in the background was really necessary.

It’s no secret that the foundations of the Tower of Tandil have always been fragile. But for the first time, Del Potro took the initiative to talk about his wounds. His story begins with his last official match against Delbonis (Buenos Aires 2022), of which the image of his tears remains before serving for the last time.

“People don’t know this, but the next day I went to Switzerland and had another knee operation. It was my fifth operation. Since then, I have not made any operation public. […] I couldn’t take my leg pain anymore. I was locked up for two months in Switzerland in a town near Basel… and things weren’t going well, I left for the United States. »

Del Potro will have to wear a prosthesis

The winner of the 2009 US Open also discusses the numerous analyzes and infiltrations to which he may have been subjected. “I must have had more than 100 injections in my leg, hip and back… They infiltrated me, they took me out, they analyzed me, they burned my nerves. , they blocked my tendons… daily suffering. »

In total, there were eight knee operations, each giving hope of improvement for several weeks, several months, before a relapse systematically occurred. So much so that Juan Martin Del Potro must now choose between pain and a prosthesis. “one doctor told me ‘put on a prosthesis and stop messing around’, but another told me to wait 50 years. This is my fight. »