RafaLint: February 17th
Photo by Beth Wilson
Articles:
- Another blog entry from Pedro Felner – complete with a picture of Rafa’s new Ferrari. (mangle)
- Palma acoge el II Congreso de Jóvenes LQDVI apadrinado por Rafa Nadal (mangle) Sounds like a nice program.
- Another article about the “What really matters” program. (mangle)
- Rafa might play an exhibition match against Federer between Wimbledon and the Olympics: Rafa Nadal jugará en el césped del Bernabéu (mangle); Rafa Nadal podría jugar en el Santiago Bernabéu (mangle). (Thanks, genny_ss)
Video:
- ‘Detrás de…’ la entrevista a Rafa Nadal – behind the scenes of the Antena 3 interview. That poor lady trying to do soemthing with his hair – heh. (If you have an adblocker installed, you might need to disable it to get the video to play.)
- Baby Rafa and Feli getting trohpies (thanks, Atch2) Cracks me up when it looks like Rafa’s all, “stop touching me…and this is MY trophy” and then walks off. And what the hell was that trophy anyway?
- New Mapfre commercial
- Some nice shots of Rafa in this Madrid promo video.
Tweets about Rafa:
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Strange days – while watching the Madrid video I realised that I really miss Robin Soderling. Maybe I’m coming down with something… But seriously, the tour is simply more fun with him meddling and spoiling and playing some happy-crazy tennis.
Mangle of Pedro Felner’s blog entry is exceptionally horrible (translating it into my native language didn’t help either) – can anyone clarify the anecdote about the young fan? Thanks :)
Sounds to me like some young guy came in off the street to tell Rafa how he should play tennis and Rafa and Toni had some fun and were playing along with him. Toni told him to keep speaking in Catalan so that Rafa’s new moves would be kept a secret from the Portuguese guys. Peter (the coach) says the moves this fan was trying to explain to Rafa and Toni made no sense whatsoever so Rafa grabbed a racquet and went out on the court so this kid should show him what he meant and it was all so funny everyone was laughing so hard they were crying.
That’s what I got from the mangle anyway, Rafa and Toni having some fun after a hard practice. Sounds sort of like the story of the guy who claims he taught Rafa how to serve, doesn’t it? They need better security at the arena!
OK, so I got that right, it just sounded too good to be true. Well, seems to me that they feel so safe and comfortable there and better security is not needed. And it would be a shame if that had to change, don’t you think?
It’s really sad what happened to Soderling and makes you realise that it could happen to any player. What’s even sadder was that he had just come into his own and now you wonder if he could ever get back that level especially with a lot of new players appearing and other starting to peak as well as the game evolving all the time.
Here’s a proper translation:
While we were resting, an unknown young man came and asked if he could speak with Toni or Rafa. He was trying, he said, to help Rafa with the plays he envisioned for the tennis of the future. So he started trying to explain this to Rafa and Toni. Since they were speaking in Catalan, I couldn’t understand everything they were saying. After a while, Toni himself, in a joking tone, turned towards the young man and said: “Keep on speaking Catalan, as I don’t want these Portuguese guys to learn your tennis plays for the future.” Well, I won’t explain what these techniques involved, because it didn’t make the least bit of sense. But the young man was very insistent and after a while, in order to show us what he meant, he took one of Rafa’s racquets and stepped on the court to enlighten us with an actual demonstration. It was sidesplitting to watch!!!
Thanks for the behind the scenes video. It’s awesome to see Rafa so familiar with a TV’s back stage. It’s almost as if he doesn’t notice the camera anymore.
Also, not accounting for my taste in men, but I sure did find Benito to be so hot in a suit!!!
I’ve always known that Rafa is a huge star in Spain but it’s pretty crazy when even his appearance for an interview is worthy of a documentary.
I may be in the minority but I think that Exhibition sounds great. Having 2 of the greatest players and grass courters, playing on grass in Spain at the BerneBeu and for charity, how often could that happen? I’m sure there’s going to be those that criticise the timing with the Olympics so close but I don’t see it as that big of an issue. There’s 3 weeks after wimbledon, Rafa will most likely go home so he’ll be in Spain and it’s one match on grass. Of course it will be interesting to see if Federer will agree to it.
That exibition sounds great to me too. I love Rafa, I love Real Madrid and I admire Roger. So I think it’s OK and I hope Fedex will agree.
Baby Rafa’s hair were so thick and straight back then. And Feli – did’nt change much.
Rafa was so big for a 17 year old! Anyone that thinks his muscles aren’t natural needs to look at some of these old videos and see how nice the genetics fairy was to Rafa. He was always a big, well-built kid.
The genetics fair was indeed kind! But I couldn’t help laughing watching that video. With his hair cut like that he reminded me of Chachi in Happy Days (not that that’s a bad thing, mind, I had the biggest crush on Chachi as a kid ;-)
I was giggling like a school girl watching the behind the scenes IB3 video! It was so lovely to be able to see Rafa so natural like that, he is absolutely lovable. Just great to see how people totally warm to him and how he is so relaxed and totally himself amongst the Spanish people, even if it’s a news network. He’s such a special person. And his smiles, my oh my his smiles, how not to fall in love with such charm. Also very cool to see what it’s like behind that news segment, that his team is there with him in the background. And it was so cute to see how at ease he is in the makeup chair :)
In fact, I’m gonna watch it again now XD
Just as good the second time around!! I could watch this on repeat all day long! Dang I wish I could record it. Sigh. Anyone know if it might be on youtube?
I’ve just watched the Antena 3 interview and it cracked me up! Rafa just looks totally adorable. SO great to see him so natural, relaxed and speaking in his own language. Fun to see him in the make up chair and my fav part was how he manages to, seconds after having his eyebrows brushed, he did his raising of his eyebrow answering a question!! I thought, at first, he did it at the same time but there is a couple of secs delay (he will raise his eyebrow whatever else is going on ;). I LOVE his hair before they started spraying it… and boy oh boy does he look fine. Also found it interesting that his jumper is purple but when i first watched the interview it looks blue. After the week with SI photoshoot and Bar, I have to say this is MUCH more how I love to see our boy!!!
My favourite part of the Pedro Felner blog was the part saying Rafa was in much better physical shape than the last time he was there-whenever that was! I know I only started following Rafa in Monte Carlo 2010 so I don’t have the perspective of you long time Rafa watchers but it seemed to me that all last year he was physical endurance was not even close to the Rafa I first saw. Actually I think I started thinking in fall of 2010 that he just wasn’t as physically well as what I saw previously. He has looked much stronger again in the start of 2012 – oh I hope he will be able to be absolutley healthy, play with joy and bite many, many trophies!
p.s thanks Sharon for making sense of the rest of the mangle
“the last time he was there-whenever that was!”
Coach Felner and his charge, hard-hitting Portuguese junior Frederico Silva, had been practicing with Rafa in Mallorca for 2 weeks at the end of October/beginning of November last year.
The fact that Rafa scraped through 2011 when he obviously wasn’t physically 100% makes me wonder what was going on with him. I’m sure his team measures his physical performance frequently. His lack of fitness had to be frustrating for him. Yet he ended the year at #2!
His improved fitness, which the AO final confirmed for me, gives me hope for this year.
I wonder when Rafa learned to smile when receiving trophies and posing for pics. :-)
Judging by the background squeals of “Rafa!” it looks like he already had quite a female following – no surprise there, he IS adorable. I’d love to know what he said that got the laugh.
Miri, at 3:14 in the behind the scenes video Rafa does the “pflubbbbt” sound you like. So cute. He is such a charming man and so friendly with everyone. The makeup girl had her low cut blouse on but Rafa’s eyes never looked down!!!
Yes, “Baby Rafa” was a muscular boy at 17 (just like my son at that age). His hair seemed a little darker in that clip – looks like it’s lighted up in the sun perhaps or maybe he gets it colored. Only his hairdresser knows for sure(lol)!
Rafa iz Mega as they say; and a pro.
Where is that “baby Rafa” …full of confidence!!!
The video was fun. ugh, I wish I knew spanish! And Benito indeed is looking sharp!