May 29 (Reuters) – Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slams and one of the ‘Big Three’ along with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic who ruled tennis for two decades, spent most of his career in pain as he willed himself to play through a chronic foot injury.
The Spaniard, who retired in 2024, said he took immense risks with his health to keep his tennis career going, after a Netflix series called ‘Rafa’ provided an in-depth look into his physical and mental struggles to pursue greatness.
“I’ve had to make decisions about my health, where you are on the borderline between right or wrong. But if I hadn’t explored all that, I probably would have had 10 fewer Grand Slams… this is the reality,” Nadal told the BBC in an interview published on Friday.
Nadal was diagnosed with a rare condition called Mueller-Weiss syndrome after he broke his foot during the Madrid Open final of 2005, months after he won the French Open on his first attempt aged 19, clinching his first Grand Slam title.
Although the condition, which was caused by his extensive training as a child under his uncle Toni, put his career at risk, Nadal refused to give up.
The injury haunted him even as he won 13 more Grand Slams in the next nine years, clinching at least one major every year.
“Tennis became a race against time. Always having the doubt in my head of, how long can I last with this foot? I never knew how long my career would last,” Nadal said.
“I always thought, maybe it’s the last year, so there’s no time to stop.”
The injury also led to other health complications, including tendinitis in his left knee and perforations in his intestines, the latter caused by the use of painkillers.
Sometimes he had to manage the pain with targeted anaesthetic injections, and had no feeling in his leg during the final of the 2022 French Open, his last Grand Slam win.
“The key was the suffering was less than my passion and my happiness for what I was doing,” the 39-year-old said.
(Reporting by Chiranjit Ojha in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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