His latest Grand Slam (Roland Garros 2022) was achieved at the age of 36, an age not only prohibitive for any tennis player but also for the greatest in history. By then, Rafa Nadal was only competing for eternity. This Thursday, October 10, 2024, the door closes definitively for someone whose competitive fierceness and work consistency bear evident similarities to those of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Eddy Merckx, or Michael Phelps, all destined for an earlier farewell. He is undoubtedly in the pantheon of the greatest athletes in history.
Much has been written about Nadal's rituals with water bottles, headbands, or court lines. A behavior, bordering on obsessive-compulsive disorder, that links him to Michael Jordan, accustomed to repeating almost obsessively the same pattern. A coffee before getting dressed, a gum, his North Carolina shorts under his underwear, the meticulous alignment of his shoelaces, always new every night, the elbow and left calf protections... And the war cry, after being the last to step onto the court: "What time is it? Game time!" Once victory was secured, he would usually enjoy the final quarter from the bench, with ice on his knees.
"His mind was like an infinite library of images, moments, and plays. He remembered every action and how he had responded to it. He knew how to prepare for what awaited him," proclaimed Tim Grover, his physical trainer, as if speaking of the tennis player from Manacor. And what awaited Jordan in the season of his farewell posed a superlative challenge. Injuries to Scottie Pippen and Steve Kerr forced him to play an average of 39 minutes in 103 games. By February 1998, he had turned 35.
That last shot in the Delta Center, for the sixth ring, cannot be understood without the thousands of hours spent with Grover, who would show up at his Highland Park mansion between five and seven in the morning. "Sometimes, when I arrived, he had already started, and I would look at the clock as if I had gotten the time wrong," the physiotherapist recounted. Jordan had given him a one-month trial, and their relationship lasted 15 years. "When he retired, he told me, 'If I see you in my neighborhood again, I'll shoot you.'"
Ali: "I hate it, but I endure it"
Behind the wheel of a beat-up car, Gene Kilroy and Bundini Brown drove through the hills of Deer Lake (Pennsylvania), boosting the morale of a champion in low spirits. It was the summer of 1978, and Muhammad Ali was sweating profusely to shed the fat that had drawn so much attention in February during his fight against Leon Spinks. "My chest burns, my throat is dry, I feel like I'm going to faint. My body is begging me to stop, but I force myself to keep running. Everything hurts. I hate it, but I endure it because I know I have to suffer. Just a few more weeks of pain to live well for the rest of my life," admitted The Greatest. He wanted to defeat the unknown opponent who, with odds of 15-1, had taken away his Council and World Association belts.
Ali's poor preparation in Miami Beach had led to one of the most significant defeats in boxing history. Surrounded by a group of flatterers, the colossus who had knocked down Sonny Liston, George Foreman, or Joe Frazier couldn't even complete ten rounds with sparring partners.
So Kilroy and Brown, under the supervision of Angelo Dundee, decided to return to the training center in Deer Lake. The discipline of the past paid off for Ali, who on September 15, at 36 years and nine months, would avenge his loss to Spinks in New Orleans. His last victory as a professional. Because as he later realized, he should never have stepped into the ring in 1980 against Larry Holmes, nor a year later against Trevor Berbick.
Merckx: "I wanted to continue, excessively"
On July 19, 1977, many fans still wondered why not a single French rider was among the doping positives in the Tour. Meanwhile, race director Jacques Goddet reiterated his criticisms of the peloton, which had given him two weeks of the most tedious racing. After 16 stages, only 49 seconds separated the top four in the general classification. Meanwhile, Eddy Merckx awaited his turn at 3:02.
It was El Caníbal's seventh Tour, convinced by Raphaël Geminiani to lead the Fiat team. His last chance to break Jacques Anquetil's record, after the unfortunate fall two years earlier in Valloire. A double jaw fracture, arriving in Paris feeding on rice porridge. "I insisted on continuing, excessively, but there were consequences for my body during the final stretch of my career," he would confess later.
However, under scorching heat in Chamonix, Merckx continued to trust his strength against Bernard Thévenet, the reigning champion. Having just turned 32, he seemed unfazed by his food poisoning or the liters of water ingested the day before to pass the anti-doping control. But the over six hours on the way to Alpe d'Huez would be the greatest torment of his life. "Even today, I wonder how I managed to reach the top of Glandon. I had to change the wheels twice, just to see if I could improve something, but on the descent, I vomited. I never suffered so much," he recounted years later. When he crossed the finish line, 13:51 behind Hennie Kuiper, the Dutchman had already received his trophy as the stage winner.
Bob Bowman, the coach with whom he had a love-hate relationship since he was 11, described him as a "solitary guy", with an astonishing ability to concentrate during training and an "extraordinarily kind heart" towards the children who approached him after each session. After all, Michael Phelps saw in the kids the affection that was always lacking in his childhood, marked by hyperactivity disorder.
His obsessive preparation under Bowman's guidance, with seven hours of daily work, combined with unparalleled genetics, propelled Phelps to the peak of Olympism. 28 medals, 23 of them gold, in four Games. No dominance as superb as that shown in the 200-meter individual medley, the event that encompasses speed, endurance, and technique, with four golds between 2004 and 2016.
However, the Spartan discipline shattered after his second farewell, in Rio de Janeiro, at just 31 years old. "When I swam, the pool was my escape valve. I channeled all the accumulated anger and used it as motivation. But now that escape has disappeared." There, Phelps faced the dark side of sports, with anxiety crises and suicide attempts.