From Australia to Paris, the believer Nadal: "If I didn't believe in winning, I wouldn't be here"

After two years of silence and intimacy, forced in reality because the pandemic reduced the presence of journalists to a minimum, the Roland Garros conference room recovers the hustle and bustle, the comings and goings of the great tennis family .

Over there you can hear the whisper of Naomi Osaka while she attends to a television, with the gigantic headphones that wrap around her temples and abstract her from the world at times;

On another side of the underground area, Paula Badosa talks and jokes in English during a video call;

Dominic Thiem also smiles in another armchair, despite the physical martyrdom of recent times;

And around noon, after completing the morning training on the central court, the lord of the house bursts in: “Rafa is coming”.

Nadal, the

, or the

, as the tournament describes him.

“For a while I was the best here, but I don't think so anymore…”, laughs the Mallorcan, who reacts to bad weather – rain, gray skies, unpleasant days – with a good face.

He wears jeans and a white polo shirt that highlights his tan, adjusts the bottles that surround the microphone, greets the woman who is in charge of the transcriptions, who returns the courtesy from a glass compartment, and answers in a good mood.

“If we are not in good spirits, everything else is impossible and even more so if we arrive with a fair preparation and without the ideal results, whether due to injuries or for whatever reason, but this is the reality.

I am not much of a speculator: what there is is what there is”, he concedes when asked by this newspaper.

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Nadal, pain and unhappiness, a double crossroads

And what lies ahead, say the latest events, adversity, the bad left foot, that bloody scaphoid, is another of those challenges within the reach of very few.

Not for him, who already did it last January in Australia and, why not, dreams of knocking down the injury monster again and repeating the feat.

"If I didn't believe it could happen, I probably wouldn't be here."

That is, Nadal does not lose faith.

No matter how much his body forces him to put the brakes on again and again, no matter how much his pain translates too often into a non-living and no matter how much the candidacy of other players is currently on the rise, call yourself Novak Djokovic, call yourself Carlos Alcaraz, he does not give up or skimp.

"Let's see what can happen."

There is life, therefore there is hope.

At the end of the day, he says, "I'm going to be 36 years old and I don't know how many Roland Garros I have left to play, because you're not stupid and you know that the opportunities are finite, so I want to give myself as many options as possible."

The hope of Dr. Cotorro

From the outset, Nadal is confident that his foot can withstand the load that lies ahead thanks to the presence of the doctor.

“I am confident that it will not bother me here.

The fact that Ángel [Ruiz-Cotorro] is here can help me in a decisive way”, he points out.

Next, he wields the argument of logic, as well as that of the breadth of his shoulders: “I have won 13 times here and I know what is there.

There is no writing in the press or any opinion from any fan that adds 0.5% pressure to me, because in the end the pressure that I generate for myself surpasses anyone who comes from outside”.

And the Balearic clings to the unpredictability of sport, repeatedly in his favour: "What seems impossible today, after a few days stops seeming impossible, and may even begin to seem very possible".

Nadal hits the ball during training this Saturday. AFP7 via Europa Press (Europa Press)

Nadal trusts in the daily work – double sessions since he landed in the tournament, last Wednesday – and that, if he manages to overcome the traps of the first rounds and recover the rhythm point, the click will come.

“It happened in Australia, where I put myself in a position to have an opportunity.

And here it is no different.

I must be positive and believe, building my options little by little.

I have to be prepared because if it happens, I don't think it's that far, that far away,” he replies optimistically.

But what are the differences between the situation in January, when he triumphed in Melbourne after more than half a year of absence (again due to his foot) and catching covid at the gates of the first

, and the current circumstance?

"If we compare both cases, there are better and worse things," he answers EL PAÍS;

“At the training level, I got there with very little preparation, although I must say that the foot was better than it is now, and that is a very important advantage.

It is true that my foot had been very bad for months, but when I got there it was better and that allowed me to be a little more calm.

Besides, this is a tournament that I'm very familiar with and have been successful in, so if I'm playing well, it's true that my chances are higher than in Australia.

History says so."

Four trials in January, five now

In any case, Nadal says that he is not a man who rethinks things too much or speculates, that he simply accepts things as they come and that, today, he does not feel that he is in

despite the idyll with Paris.

“The results say that I am not a favourite, not at all, but that is something that never worried me too much;

in fact, when I was probably the favorite, I never considered myself that way.

Of course, I am one of the candidates”, he clarifies, while underlining the harshness of the picture;

Of course, he does not lose sleep: "Many things can happen before reaching the games that you are assuming."

That is, a hypothetical crossover in the quarterfinals with Djokovic and another in the semifinals with Alcaraz, who will debut on Sunday.

Nadal will do it Monday, against the Australian Jordan Thompson (82nd).

And he will do it again against all odds.

The champion of 21 majors landed five months ago in Melbourne on the buzzer, having only played four preparatory matches;

now he will arrive at the Paris premiere after cracking a rib and suffering from his foot again, with only five matches on clay and, for the first time, without lifting a trophy before Roland Garros on the surface on which he has traditionally swept.

“In Australia, something that seemed impossible was won, considering where we came from, and here we are before another opportunity.

Winning is not an obligation or anything like that, as it has sometimes seemed in past years, but I am going to do my best to give myself another opportunity”, he closes the speech.

Quite a declaration of faith.

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