Nadal and Tennis are definitely history after Spain's defeat on Tuesday in the Davis Cup quarter-finals. On this occasion, 20 Minutes publishes a series of articles on the tennis legend with 22 Grand Slam titles. Today, let's talk about the Spaniard's relationship with pain.
While Rafael Nadal's career is now behind him, we wonder what we could offer in such circumstances to the man who already has everything, and won everything. To stay in our humorous vein, far from the heroic (and relatively ugly) steel statue that the Roland-Garros tournament reserved for him, we would opt for a good old game of Doctor Maboule. Because who better than the Spaniard to embody this guy patched up everywhere, whose every part of the body recalls a memory of injury or chronic pain, like a furry man remembered each battle by listing his scars?
If there is one thing that differentiates Nadal from his two famous opponents, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, it is this. Rarely has an athlete of such a level experienced so many physical problems and suffering throughout his career. From his first foot injury in 2003, which cost him a first loss at Roland that year, to his aching and squeaking abs last March, the Spaniard has never been spared by this put-upon body, he It must be said, under severe strain for more than two decades.
“He’s a tough guy.”
Physiotherapist of the French Tennis Federation, Christophe Ceccaldi has often encountered the animal in the corridors and on the massage tables of Roland-Garros. He is therefore well placed to confirm to us that “on the pain tolerance scale, Rafael Nadal is not too bad (laughs)! “. Gritting your teeth and defying all odds is one of the leitmotifs of his life as an athlete.
“From the start, everyone said that with his game, he wouldn't last three years, that he was going to explode in flight. Twenty years later, he is still there and he has 22 Grand Slams, applauds the physiotherapist. He was a physical beast who ran everywhere, no matter the pain. In fact, when he's in a tournament, nothing stops him. You really have to cut off his foot so he doesn't go there. » And again…
In addition to the abs, knees, hips or elbows (non-exhaustive list), affected here and there since the early 2000s, Nadal ended up admitting that he was suffering from Müller-Weiss syndrome, a rare disease which compresses the navicular bone, above the foot, and leads to spontaneous osteonecrosis (death, basically) of the bone. An illness against which we can do nothing, except by operating, which would then have sounded the death knell for his life as an athlete.
“He is a player who is tough to the core and who has always trained in this way, who has accepted doses of work that are quite crazy for ordinary mortals,” recalls Lionel Roux, consultant for beIN Sports, broadcaster of the Davis Cup this week. I think that when we construct ourselves like that, we necessarily have a different relationship to suffering. When you train this hard, this strong, you have this ability to accept injuries and pain more easily. »
The “Nadal case” gets surgeons talking
In the surgical community, we even learned that we were talking about the “Nadal case”. This is what Doctor Nicolas Baudrier, orthopedic surgeon at the Nollet clinic, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, tells us, who sees one or two cases of Müller-Weiss per year. “We talk about it regularly among ourselves, we wonder how he manages to play with this illness. A guy who has that and plays at that level is crazy. He must have a phenomenal mind. No one other than him could play with such a pathology,” judges Nicolas Baudrier.
This is not trivial if we find no other trace of a high-level athlete suffering from the same syndrome. As Dr. Angel Ruiz-Cotorro, Nadal's personal doctor who knows the Majorcan's foot more than his own, said, “this is a unique case in the world, it does not generally occur in high-level athletes because it does not allow them to practice their respective disciplines as they would like. »
« “I often make comparisons with professional dancers. When I operate on a dancer's foot, I know that she will not feel anything because she has been so used to living with this suffering… Nadal, it's the same, agrees Nicolas Baudrier. His pain receptors are not those of ordinary mortals. » »
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Another indicator of a reinforced concrete mentality: Nadal is one of those stubborn people who never gives up during a match for almost any reason. “I remember his final (lost) in 2014 against Wawrinka at the Australian Open. He suffered a lot from his back but he insisted on going to the end,” rewinds François Thomazeau, co-author of the book Nadal, The Greatest of All Timepublished by En Exergue editions. Ditto ten years earlier, at the very beginning of his career, in a match against Richard Gasquet, recounted by the latter in The Team some time ago.
“Rafa was already perfectly portraying the one who never gives up, even when he is in very, very pain. At the start of the third round, he began to suffer from a stress fracture in his foot which would take him away from the circuit for a few weeks, and cause him to miss his first Roland-Garros. But he had outdone himself in pain to eliminate me, before being withdrawn for the next day. »
“Will Rafa make a nice old man? »
The fact remains that if the ruminant of Manacor is not a child, this perseverance has often found in science a precious ally to alleviate, or even forget, pain. Nadal resorted to infiltrations a lot to be able to continue playing. After his 14th victory at Roland, in 2022, he will admit at the end of the tournament to having done one after another like us the shots at the end of the evening. “He always goes as far as possible, at all levels, including medically, but always within the rules,” agrees the FFT physiotherapist.
To the point of mortgaging, for the glory of the prize list, his post-retirement years? “Will Rafa make a nice old man?” asks François Thomazeau. With all the infiltrations he's had, one might wonder. As we all love Rafa and he's a great guy, we hope for his sake that he didn't play stupid and that it will be okay. » Once the tank tops are put away in the closet, we can predict without too much risk of being wrong that the boy should (finally) play the pool table. “After such an operation, people with Müller-Weiss can say goodbye to running or tennis. But he will still be able to play golf,” Dr. Baudrier reassures us. So, see you at the next Augusta Masters, Rafa?
