There are athletes who do not embody goodbyes.
His legacy is so great, the imprint is so deep, that his goodbye will never amount to oblivion.
The end of a sports career will simply be a new chapter, another stage of his example, that mirror in which so many look at themselves.
On Friday we attended Roger Federer's epilogue on the tennis courts, a day that we never wanted to see on the calendar.
The departure of the Swiss threatened to appear in our thoughts.
On the one hand, with the passage of time, he stretched a brilliant career over 40 years.
A barbarity fueled by passion.
On the other, knee injuries, which have punished a body that has been cared for to the extreme for so many seasons.
For such a perfectionist athlete, a ballast that prevented him from performing at the desired level, with the impressive brightness to which he had accustomed us.
Federer has been the seeming ease brought to tennis.
Anyone who practices this sport wants to do it like him.
Take the blows to that plasticity, to that level of relaxation.
It is talent and it is art.
It's hard to think of anyone who doesn't enjoy watching the Swiss, cheer him on or not.
Whether or not he's his favorite player.
If you love tennis, if you watch it with real attention, you enjoy watching Roger play.
His dedication has been such that he amazed different generations.
We grew up seeing them overcome, succeed and give us a lesson in values.
He taught us sportsmanship and respect above all else.
He showed us that it is possible to reach the top while keeping your feet on the ground.
Coinciding at the same time has been special.
Being able to compete on the same courts, something unforgettable.
His figure is already in the history books.
We are talking about one of the best tennis players of all time.
On top of that, he is one of the most brilliant athletes in modern sport.
He has reached unprecedented limits in men's tennis, breaking records that seemed untouchable just a few years ago.
That is one of his great legacies, expanding limits that we would have taken for granted.
A sports career is not understood without his main rivals.
Perhaps Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic have surpassed their record for Grand Slam singles titles, perhaps the numbers say that the Swiss does not appear at the top of the milestone.
But they achieved it spurred on by a historic player, someone who fueled their desire to excel until drawing a golden age in the men's locker room.
The great ones are even greater because of the challenges they encounter along the way.
He has given us years of fantasy, turning victory into a sporting norm.
In a discipline so linked to defeat, a fate from which only one escapes each week, the Swiss showed a different path.
For more than two decades he lived close to splendor, raising the well-known
Big Three
together with the Spaniard and the Serbian, a three-way rivalry unattainable for the rest.
Federer's departure is not the goodbye of a great player, it is something much more intense.
It is the excellence engraved in our memory, an innate ability to popularize a sport.
A gateway to modern tennis that we will never fully thank.
The athlete turns off and the icon lights up.
A threshold reserved for almost no one, a door to eternity crossed with undeniable talent and infinite tenacity.
Roger will always be tennis.
We are lucky to have experienced it.
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