PARIS — His family speaks, his team speaks, his greatest rivals speak. The portrait of Rafael Nadal in RAFA, the new Netflix docuseries, is an intimate journey through the voices that shaped the career of the 22-time Grand Slam champion.
It features unprecedented confessions, deep reflections, and sharply contrasting views on sport, motivation, and medicine. Below, CLAY offers an exclusive preview of some of the best quotes from the docuseries, set to premiere on May 29th.
- “I haven’t found a way to find the energy to overcome this, or at least to try. I guess all the fatigue has played a part, but beyond everything, I haven’t felt any inner strength to try and change the situation. I’m somewhere between sad and disappointed to see that I’m unable to play the way I train on so many days. During the match, I decided I was retiring. I think I’m going to stick to it because what happened today is unacceptable for me.” (An excerpt from the WhatsApp message Rafael Nadal sent to his team’s group chat the day he lost the Bastad final to Nuno Borges in August 2024)
- “There isn’t only one path to success. You don’t need to suffer the stress I suffered to become what I became. But I followed the path Toni laid out for me. And I believe it was the right path. I am not a winner; I am a competitor. Victory lasts only so long; it’s momentary. What has always motivated me is the desire to keep fighting, because satisfaction comes from difficulty.” (Rafael Nadal reflecting on his motivation and success)
- “He likes to suffer with the intention of overcoming that suffering, but at the end of his career, the suffering didn’t lead to overcoming anything—it was just suffering for the sake of suffering. And that, I believe, is what put out his fire.” (Rafael Maymò, his lifelong physiotherapist, on Nadal’s motivation in his final stage)
- “The temptation to quit is always there. If you accustom yourself to hanging in there for one more ball, that is what great champions do: they hang in there for one more ball.” (Toni Nadal on the mentality he instilled in his nephew from the very beginning)
- “Only once did I tell him I couldn’t take it anymore. I left the court completely shattered and crying. But I never went home crying. I would have never wanted my father to go and ask Toni to be less hard on me. My feeling was that I would have let Toni down by not being a strong enough person to take it.” (Rafael Nadal on Toni Nadal’s extreme demands during training when he was a child)
- “In my career, I’ve had to make decisions regarding my health where you are right on the edge of what’s right and what’s wrong. The line is thin, but if I hadn’t explored it, maybe I would have 10 fewer Grand Slams today. I’m not telling you one or two—I’m telling you maybe 12.” (Rafael Nadal on his decision to push his body to the absolute limit)
- “I have two perforations in my intestines from taking so many anti-inflammatories.” (Rafael Nadal talking about how he pushed his body to the edge and abused anti-inflammatories during a period of his career)
- “I finish my first match and my father has to carry me on his back all the way to the room. I’m in so much pain, and I don’t sleep a single minute all night. Thinking, thinking, thinking… In the morning, I called Cotorro (the doctor) and told him: ‘Is there any way to numb the sensory nerve without affecting the motor nerve?’” (Rafael Nadal recalling the 2022 Roland Garros tournament, when he played from the second round onward with a completely numbed foot because he could not bear the pain)
- “I am the most punctured player in the history of our sport.” (Rafael Nadal to his team during a practice session in May 2024, fed up with the endless injuries and physical discomfort he endured)
- “Tennis became a race against time for me. Always having that doubt in the back of my mind about how long I could last with this foot. I always thought, ‘maybe this is the last year, so there’s no time to stop. I have to push to the limit until the end.’” (Rafael Nadal on the foot injury he suffered in 2005 that almost ruined his career)
- “The Roland Garros record is going to be tough to beat. I think it will be harder to surpass this one than Djokovic’s 24. You never know, but if you made me bet money, I think it will take longer to beat 14 Roland Garros titles than 24 Grand Slams.” (Rafael Nadal on his way back to the hotel with his team and his eldest son after losing in the first round of Roland Garros 2024)
Rafael Nadal, en una imagen del documental | Netflix - “The fifth set was brutal; physically, it was a slaughter. I lost that day, but I wasn’t frustrated or devastated. I was satisfied because I had overcome myself mentally. I felt like I was back.” (Rafael Nadal on the 2012 Australian Open final, the longest final in Grand Slam history. It was Nadal’s seventh consecutive final loss to Djokovic)
- “If I didn’t have a water bottle in my hand, I couldn’t swallow my own saliva. My throat would go completely dry, and I would choke on my own spit.” (Rafael Nadal on the episodes of anxiety he suffered in 2015, which led him to seek the help of a psychiatrist for the first time)
- “I lived the final years of my career with a sense of freedom and less tension than when Toni was around.” (Rafael Nadal on how he experienced life after Toni unexpectedly left the coaching staff in 2017)
