CAMELOT FANTASIES

I'm snitching this from Nadal News. http://www.nadalnews.com/2014/02/03/.../#.UvG5U7SGfqc

Rafa won two awards, Sporting Excellence and Best Sportsman of 2013, at the Mundo Deportivo award ceremony last night.

And I am snitching it also:

Couple of quotes from interviews he gave:

Quote:
[He's also been asked how he's feeling emotionally] I’m fine. What can I say… It’d be quite unfair to say that I’m not OK after all the things life has given to me. I’m a person who accepts defeats very well, I’ve always have, and after a few hours I don’t think of it any more. This time it’s taking me a bit more. In the end, it was an important match for me and I couldn’t compete. It was a bit unpleasant what happened and emotionally I’m now eager to be back competing because the best way to forget is by competing again.

Injuries never come at a good time, but this [back] was at one of the worst possible times: in front of 15000 people in a GS Final in a match at which you arrived well prepared, as the opponent, but ready for the challenge, after having gone through a difficult week due to the blister in the hand, after having been months preparing this tournament with all the dedication. Having done all the right things to reach to this moment that I dreamed to get to in good conditions, and then this happens… It’s part of the athlete life, but better if it doesn’t happen often (laughs). It’s turned out this way, you have to accept it and try to create more chances in the future.


[on the tears he shed on court]

There aren’t tears for back pain. They’re for pain of the helplessness, of having got there and not being able to compete. Obviously they are moments difficult to accept, even more if you are in the middle of the court and you know that you’re not going to win; that you have no chance at all to win. And I have no intention to retire because it’s a difficult and very unpleasant situation to retire in a final like that. Thus, I went through a very complicated moment there, the worst 1 hour and a half I’ve spent on a tennis court because of what the match meant to me, because of the match itself: a GS Final. But, well, that’s what happens sometimes and I tried to take it the best possible way get over it and end well. I think that was the only way to leave – at least with the head held high and that’s what I did, and here we are!