By Javier Mart�nez, El Mundo
May 21, 2024
[Translated from Spanish by Elisa, Marina and Kiara. Thanks for the great article!]
Personal portrait of the Roland Garros favourite player, which starts on Monday, after living with him in Rome. He gave up his studies because he lost his books while travelling. He likes buying jeans and belts, and he listens to pop music.
ROME.- It�s 6.35 Sunday 1st May when Rafael Nadal, skilled hard-worker of the racquet, appears at the airport of Palma de Mallorca. The Air Europa flight 6006 which will take off an hour after to Barcelona, transit place to Rome, waits for a luxury passenger, who will be honoured with a first class seat though he bought a tourist class ticket.
He wears a white, long-sleeved Calvin Klein polo shirt, Armani jeans and Nike sports shoes. Label image only on it, because the boy, even with all the attention of everyone he passes on, he moves with an unsuitable naturalness of the seventh tennis player of the world, of this year Monte Carlo Masters Series, Conde de God�, Acapulco and Costa do Sauipe winner, of the imminent champion, eight days after embarking on this travel, in the Italic Forum of Rome, the first candidate to win from next Monday Roland Garros title, where he will start with the number five in the Indesit ATP Ranking list, the trade hierarchy.
He arrives with his father, Sebasti�n, a businessman married with Ana Mar�a and also father of Maribel, a girl of fourteen. Rafa, who next 3rd June will be 19, has a chocolate milk shake and a napolitana for breakfast while he talks in Majorcan with his father. It was a long night, admits the main figure. �I don�t speak a lot because I�m KO�, joked after returning from Porto Cristo, a smart town next to Palma, where he stretched out his last hours of his six lull days in his familiar residence.
�Moy� is in a bad way. I�ve been talking with him and he says he is hurt�, he points out after helding out his hand to the journalist who will be his shadow during a day for him like one other of the professional circuit. He is worried about the injury which forced his friend to give up in Estoril semifinals. Moyi, as he sometimes called him joking, is one of his one�s own people, model during his childhood, though he insists that he always has tried to gaze at his own mirror, which reflected the picture of a winner able to skip all the periods and to have become a phenomenon capable of cause expectations just comparable with the ones of Boris Becker, Wimbledon champion at the age of 17, in 1985.
AUTOGRAPHS AND MORE AUTOGRAPHS
�Don�t stress him�, suggests a saleswoman of a shop where he buys a 1 litre bottle of water and two packs of chocolate biscuits, his food for the trip that he�d spend sleeping, not being aware of the greedy gazes of the crew. With no CD player or video games, he�s going to stop competing at least just for a while, because he admits that he likes to win in everything, �even when playing with the Play Station�.
He signs autographs here and there, he never denies a signing or a thankful answer, to those who ask him for a writing of his right hand in something similar to paper. The left, for sports, also when hitting a soccer ball, because he eats like God orders and he writes just like �el Caudillo� (Franco) dictated.
He wears a brown pelt wallet, with some carnet pictures in it, none of them for the devoted. He pays with coins, without showing the amount of credit cards, apparently in a mess.
He says goodbye to his father with a formal and severe kiss, undoubted sample of how used they are to good-byes. He checked-in a modern balck suitcase and he carries in his hand, in the right, a Babolat bag with five racquets. In the left, a bag. Professional from the head to the feet, he's aware of what he�s become.
A part of the brand of his job�s instrument and his shoes, which he wears in and out the courts, his name is linked commercially to Colacao, to Kia�s vehicles and Rosdor�s biscuits. The Majorcan makers of this biscuits are going to export their products to places like Miami and their objective is to earn nearly 7.000.000�.
He�s not afraid to fly, he�s just have �respect� for flying. He sleeps even when landing. Basic luggage with no distractions or things to do. He finished E.S.O. (Cumpolsory Sencondary Education, 4 years). The studies were forgotten after losing the books three years ago, during a trip to play in a future tournament (of an inferior category) in the Canary Islands. �He hated maths. I then registered him in 1st Bachillerato (the next stage after 4th ESO), but the truth is that he�s never had the intention to continue�, will explain his mother later.
THE TRAVELLING HABIT
As soon as he arrives to Barcelona, he boasts, without pretending it, of a tremendous calmness at airports. Ease and relaxation on his way to the Iberia flight 4626 which will take him to the Italian capital soon after midday. In any case, not a single inappropriate waste of energy. He walks on the metallic conveyor belt, he doesn�t go up a single stair and he sits on the rolling trolley while he waits for the suitcase. He buys the sports press and he goes to the chemist�s. �Recovering�, it reads one of the purchased products.
The pupils of a high-school of M�laga, who take him by storm, wait. A photo here, with sophisticated digital cameras, other scribble there, even without the mixing of weariness and modesty that suits to the stars and heroes, as Onetti would say.
He stops in the football pages, in the enthusiastic reports of the journals from Madrid about the Real Madrid�s victory in Anoeta, which put them circumstancially at only 3 points far from Barcelona, by then the leader of the championship with still four other matches to play, Who will win the League? �I guess Bar�a will�, he regrets as being a confessed Real Madrid supporter, except for the period when his uncle Miguel Angel wore the Bar�a�s t-shirt.
�It doesn�t set off the dectector, I�ve travelled a lot and it has never set it off�, he tells the El Prat airport�s clerk who forces him to take off his belt in the metal detector. He doesn�t wear a watch. He just needs the cellphone. Back in the clouds again, he moves his hair, now to his right shoulder, now to the left one, while having another sleep watched with kindness, astonishment and with some unconfessed feelings from those young girls who are near him.
�IS SHARAPOVA PLAYING?�
In Rome, Andre Agassi is waiting for him, less aggresive in an act organized by the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals). He changes his clothes, he goes more sporting now, after being at the Parco dei Principi hotel, his rivals� refuge. �Is Sharapova playing? She�s not here now, is she?�, he regrets in the accrediting area. Single and with no compromise, without a driving license yet; he usually goes out in Palma with other five friends, although sometimes girls like Marta- 17 years old, scientific Bachiller student- go with them. � I went with him the other day to buy clothes, two jeans and a belt�, she tells on the phone.
�Dancing? Yes, he dances. He�s shy, but not that much when he�s confident with the people around him�, she adds. Music? Pop, Marc Anthony, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Paulina Rubio and even Enrique Iglesias�, his sister Maribel � who left tennis due to a back problem, and is not starting to play basketball.
ENGLISH AND �SPANGLISH�
After lunch, he goes to the tiring media�s office, before exchanging balls with David Ferrer and Feliciano L�pez. He answers in Spanish, relaxed and joking, to a group of journalists. Then comes the worse thing. He jumps into a studio where ESPN and Sky Sports� public menaces him, all of them ready to hear his precarious English.
He always shakes hands and introduces himself to everyone who talks to him; polite, humble, courteous. He gets scared before using inmediately the instructions the ATP�s communication director had just given him. �My goal��, he says properly, a few minutes after getting surprised by the exclusively soccer phonetics of the word.
He�s the most wanted player in Rome, where the Spanish success (S�nchez Vicario, Corretja, Moy�, Mantilla, Ferrero) had never been able to overcome the Americans in terms of popular affection. First time in this city after passing quickly two years ago, he plans an ambitious visit, somehting not very common between his colleagues. His effervescense finishes with any tourist willing he might have had.
A 317 METERS�S DRIVE!
In the car he remembers one brief playful moment. Fishing and golf, �a non-risky sport that helps you to relax�. �The other day I hit a 317 meters�s drive!�, he congratulates himself. The affection comes from his uncle and coach, Toni, thanks to whom, we already know, he started to play tennis at five years old. �Rafael is just the fifth of the world passing balls above the net�, insists the conductor, always aware of the needs to improve: the service, the game at the net.
�He likes fish since he was a kid, he learned a lot of names and now he strives for the fish of the season, he catches some tuna", explained Sebasti�n Nadal.
OCTOPUS AND WHITE PASTA
After finishing the first training and having a massage, there�s still the interview with Sports Illustrated, inevitably late because of the frenzy of the day.
�Come, Feli, you'll have a great time listening to my English�. Feliciano L�pez connects the Internet in the players room. He informs him what�s happening on the soccer day. �Majorca 3, Espanyol 2�.
Dinner with Moy� and his coach, Joan Bosch: Stew octopus and white pasta.
They remember about Davis Cup, talk, not much about the future. He�s tired. Tomorrow he�ll have to be dedicated while he waits for Youzhny, his first victim. He dreams about sleeping a lot, already in his bed, alone, no fans or witnesses.
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