Rafa Nadal and other myths that defeated pain

Rafa Nadal

has played his entire career with a sentence handed down.

The problem he suffers from in his left foot, known as Müller-Weiss disease, is a progressive deformation of the scaphoid, a degenerative lesion for which there is no cure.

Only treatments to contain wear or ignore the pain threshold.

Like the man from Manaco, other great athletes have circumvented injuries that put their careers in danger to achieve glory.

Stephen Curry's ankles

's right ankle

.

Two years of repeated sprains had destroyed his, and the operation he'd had the previous summer hadn't worked.

The next step had to be more aggressive and therefore more risky.

In the best case, it would be six months off.

At worst, the uncertainty of not knowing if he could play basketball again, or at what level.

The year was 2012, and Curry wasn't Curry yet.

Only when opening the meat, the doctors saw that it would be enough to thoroughly clean the area.

Curry doesn't play with the tendons of a corpse, but he needs cumbersome protections to shield his ankles, a major problem for an athlete whose style has high doses of changes of pace and direction.

Despite everything, he has been a three-time NBA champion, two-time MVP and is currently playing his sixth Finals in eight years as the leader of the Golden State Warriors.

Peyton Manning's arm

Only after the worst had passed,

confessed to what extent the ordeal of his neck problems he suffered in 2010 had reached. Considered one of the best quarterbacks of all time, Manning revealed to the Washington Post that the operations caused damage on his nerves and left him without strength in his right arm, and that he could barely throw the ball five yards.

"I had to learn again."

The injury cost him the entire 2011 season and his job with the Colts, the only team he had played for in his 13-year career.

But after more than a blank year, he resurfaced in the Denver Broncos: in 2013 he won his fifth MVP trophy and in 2015 he won the Super Bowl.

A few months later, he confessed that he had still not regained feeling in his fingertips.

The Tiger Woods US Open

Two months before the 2008 US Open,

underwent surgery to remove cartilage from his left knee.

From that tournament there are two images in his memory: his obvious walking problems, which were then blamed on a hasty return, and his epic victory on the 19th hole of the playoff against

.

A triumph that became even more memorable when the 'Tiger' revealed the true extent of his physical problems.

In a subsequent press conference, Tiger Woods revealed that he had been playing for at least ten months with a torn ligament in his left knee and that, two weeks before the US Open, he had suffered a double stress fracture in his tibia.

That would be his last victory in a 'major' until the 2019 Masters, after a decade marked by personal problems and continuous physical problems, including four back operations.

Ronaldo's knee

It's one of the defining moments of 21st-century football:

stampeding against the Lazio box in the 2000 Italian Cup final. The Brazilian had come on a few minutes earlier, ending a five-month sideline injury. knee.

The defense backed down, as if something else could be done against 'O Fenomeno'.

Ronaldo feinted, hit the right and, in the words of his physio,

, the patellar tendon was blown up.

The injury cost him almost two years of career in his prime and those stampedes that doubled as spectacles of nature, but not the poison in the area.

Shortly after his return, Ronaldo led Brazil to its fifth World Cup with eight goals in seven games, including a brace in the final against Germany.

That same summer he closed his signing for Real Madrid, where he would give the last gasps of greatness, like that hat-trick in the Champions League that deserved the ovation from Old Trafford.

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