In September 2013, a few weeks after winning another golden clover of speed (100, 200 and 4×100 meters) at the Moscow World Championships, Usain Bolt announced that he was retiring after the 2016 Olympic Games. The Jamaican star repeated the feat two years later at the World Cups in Beijing and He showed up in Rio de Janeiro ready to say goodbye in style.
It was far from the stratospheric chronometers of his best times, but Bolt managed to hang three more golds around his neck. He had achieved it. He left athletics at the top, reigning in the Olympic Games, a similar decision that Michael Phelps. The American swimmer also retired those days after adding five more golds in Rio. Two of the greatest legends of the sport went hand in hand and without showing signs of weakness.
Phelps stood his ground, But Bolt was bitten by the bug and in the end decided to stretch his career a little further. The 2017 London World Cups were going to be its epilogue. But nothing went as he expected: he gave up the 200 meters to focus on the 100, but his legs only gave him bronze and in the 4×100 relay, the last race of his life, he ended on the ground. Crying. Injured.
The case of Rafael Nadal
“A World Cup doesn’t change what I did. I have shown my credentials during my career, so losing my last race is not going to change what I achieved in the sport“was the reflection of the fastest man ever known, an athlete who revolutionized athletics with his stride and style.”Someone came and told me that Muhammad Ali also lost his last fight“.
He is right in both things he said: that relief in no way tainted a career that will be difficult to match and Ali lost his last fight. In fact, the boxer lost the last two fights he fought, back in the early 80s. These are two examples, but there are many more, of how difficult it is for great legends to say goodbye with a great triumph.
Rafael Nadal now looks at that painful unwritten law. The 22-time Grand Slam champion, who will turn 38 in June, transits towards the end of his career in a cloud of questions. After missing all of 2023 due to a hip injury, he reappeared at the beginning of 2024 but in his third game he suffered a new physical mishap. Since then he has not competed. This week he resigned from Indian Wells and now the European clay court tour appears as the last parachute.
The Spaniard has not won a title since he won his 14th Roland Garros in June 2022 and since then, he has won just 12 games and suffered nine defeats. Their great chances of taking another bite of a trophy are through the clay season, with Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and, of course, Roland Garros, on the calendar.. At the moment it is unknown what tournaments he will play, but of course the Parisian Grand Slam is his main goal.
Phelps and Sampras, the exceptions
There are very few exceptions, very few legends who have retired at the top. Phelps is one of them and Pete Sampras, another: The American tennis player’s last match, the one he had accumulated the most until the appearance of the Big Three, was the final of the US Open 2022, in which he beat Andre Agassi.
“It would be nice to hang up my racket after beating an opponent like Andre in a final, but I still want to compete. I love playing,” said Pistol Pete. But he would not play again: months later he would announce that that was his last match as a professional tennis player.
“He no longer had anything to prove to me and on that side it was easy to withdraw, but at the same time it is difficult to say goodbye to something you have been doing for so many years. I’m delighted with how I said goodbye. It was the moment“added the 14-time champion years later.
That moment is tremendously difficult to choose when you have been doing the same thing for years or decades and when the illusion prevails over the physical. Nobody wants to retire losing, but most of the time the body does not accompany the head. There is a reason why the examples are reduced to Phelps, Sampras and little else. Maybe Zinedine Zidanewho hung up his boots in the World Cup final, although he was sent off after that headbutt to Marco Materazzi.
Serena Williams She went five years without winning a Grand Slam before retiring as number 413 in the WTA rankings. Jack Nicklaus He won the last of his 18 majors twenty years before saying goodbye, Diego Armando Maradona He was involved in a thousand controversies, Skin He went to the New York Cosmos and Alfredo di Stefano He ended his days at Espanyol. Now, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo They are in the MLS and the Saudi League, respectively.
A mirror to look at is Roger Federer, who hung up his racket in September 2022 after a year without competing. The Swiss’s last professional match dates back to July 7, 2021, in the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Hurkacz took the first two sets 6-3 and 7-6 and put the finishing touch to the legend with the final 6-0. Since then, his fight against injuries and his spirit prevented him from announcing the inevitable. Her last dance was at the Laver Cup in a doubles match with Rafa Nadal.
There were also cases of athletes who retired and later returned, but nothing was the same. It happened to Michael Jordan in his last return with the Washington Wizards, where he did not even reach the playoffs; Lance Armstrong He reappeared when the scandal had not yet broken out and the most he achieved was third place in the 2009 Tour; and Michael Schumacher He ended up becoming one more in the Formula 1 pitlane, achieving a podium in his three years with Mercedes.
2024-03-09 07:02:01
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