Rafael Nadal will compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics, hoping to win a medal as he's set to play in both singles and doubles.
This year's upcoming Olympics will be special in many ways. Not only will we get to see Olympic tennis on clay, which is fairly rare, but we're also going to see Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz playing doubles together, which we won't see often in the future because the 38-year-old won't play that long.
Neither of them is particularly committed to playing doubles regularly on the ATP Tour, but the chance to win a medal for Spain is obviously very motivating for both. The event venue, Roland Garros, only contributes to that further as they're both quite familiar with it and love to play there.
“On the sporting level, I try to play the tournaments that my body allows me to play. What I look forward to is to prepare for the Olympic Games. If everything goes well, I will play the tournament in Sweden. I'm really looking forward to participating in the Olympic Games, this is my last chance and I hope to be able to win a medal.”
Winning a medal won't be easy for the Spaniard because many great players will try to do the same. It's also not completely impossible because we're talking about Nadal and the Roland Garros venue. He's been practically unbeatable there for two decades.
His most recent match wasn't very good, but he faced Alexander Zerev in the first round, a player who won two sets in the final against Alcaraz. That's a superbly complicated first-round match, so we never really got to see him play.
With more practice and a best-of-three format, Nadal can certainly do some damage. If singles don't go well, with Alcaraz as his partner, they can certainly do well in the doubles as well.
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