Rafael Nadal has disclosed that he spent most of his career in pain due to a chronic foot injury, risking his health to win 22 grand slam titles. The Spaniard, who retired in 2024, said he made decisions on the borderline between right and wrong to keep playing, acknowledging that without those risks he would have won 10 fewer majors.
Nadal was diagnosed with Mueller-Weiss syndrome after breaking his foot during the 2005 Madrid Open final, months after winning his first French Open aged 19. The condition, possibly caused by extensive childhood training, threatened his career, but he refused to quit.
The injury plagued him even as he won 13 more grand slams in the next nine years. “Tennis became a race against time,” Nadal told the BBC. “I never knew how long my career would last. I always thought: ‘Maybe it’s the last year, so there’s no time to stop.’”
The foot problem led to other health issues, including tendinitis in his left knee and intestinal perforations from painkillers. During the 2022 French Open final, his last grand slam win, he had no feeling in one leg due to targeted anaesthetic injections. “The key was the suffering was less than my passion and my happiness for what I was doing,” the 39-year-old said.
