Show notes
Zach Heinzerling, the Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated director behind Netflix's new four-part documentary series Rafa. The series follows Rafael Nadal across the final year of his career, from his 2024 return through his retirement, while reaching back across two decades to tell the fuller story of one of the most decorated and most physically punished athletes in the history of tennis. The series goes beyond the 22 Grand Slams and 14 French Open titles to reveal what it cost to win them: a rare, incurable foot condition called Müller-Weiss syndrome, diagnosed when Rafa was just nineteen; years of aggressive medical intervention that left him with perforated intestines; and a 2022 Roland Garros run played on a foot deadened by nerve-blocking injections. For the first time on camera, Rafa removes his sock and shows the foot itself — an image he had guarded from the public for twenty years.
The series also explores the formative role of his uncle and longtime coach Toni Nadal, whose tough-love methods shaped Rafa from the age of three; the anxiety and ritual beneath the on-court persona; and the rivalries with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic that defined a generation, including the now-famous Laver Cup farewell where Rafa and Federer sat side by side and wept.
Featuring testimony from Federer, Djokovic, John McEnroe, and the family, coaches, and inner circle who have stood beside Nadal his entire career, Rafa is less a highlight reel than a portrait of a champion in negotiation with his own body — and an answer, or an attempt at one, to the question of why he kept playing long after that body told him to stop.
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