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Rafael Nadal Remodeled Team For The Final Stage of His Career.
Rafael Nadal Remodeled Team For The Final Stage of His Career.
The departure of one of his coaches, Francis Roig, leaves the Manacorí with a changed and remodeled team for the final stage of his career.
There are times when a break in time can be a victory for both parties involved. Rafa Nadal knows what painful changes are, although sometimes more than necessary. The two coaches with whom he won his first Grand Slam, back in 2005, will no longer accompany him next season.
Francis Roig, the historic coach in Rafa’s triumphs, has decided to embark on a new professional project on the ATP circuit, stopping training the man from Manacor for the first time in 18 years. It hasn’t been an ugly break or anything like that, but Rafa needed a new impulse for this final part of his career.
“I have made this decision after thinking about it a lot and I understand that the time has come to start a new project that includes more than one player and that allows me to form my working group for the coming years,” said Roig about his departure from a team Nadal that is now made up of Carlos Moyá and Marc López.
The departure of Toni Nadal
The departure of Francis Roig joins that of Toni Nadal at the end of 2017. At that time, Rafa’s uncle decided to dedicate himself to the academy and also to advise players. Top-level tennis players such as Félix Auger-Aliassime or Casper Ruud have emerged from his factory, which is a 100% product of the Nadal school.
Toni is the mirror in which Roig will look at himself after dedicating a lifetime to improving the game of Rafa Nadal who has reached impressive heights. Now, the best tennis player in the history of Spain faces a new stage with coaches completely different from the original ones.
The differences between each other
While Roig and uncle Toni had an impact on long points and the psychological exhaustion of the rival, the duo formed by Moyá and López seek to extend Rafa’s career through shorter, explosive, and dynamic points. Since Moyá entered at the end of 2016, Nadal’s serve has experienced a significant improvement to the point of turning it into a strength when before it was a weakness.
Rafael Nadal Remodeled Team For The Final Stage of His Career.
The transition from Toni’s departure as Rafa’s coach to make way for Moyá lasted exactly one season and the sequence has been repeated with Roig leaving his place to Marc López. The latter was a fundamental piece in Nadal’s career when he experienced one of his lowest points at the 2016 Brazil Olympics, winning a gold medal in doubles together.
De López highly values Rafa’s ability to see tennis as easy and also his quality when it comes to improving the game on the net. As a good doubles player, this coach has pushed his pupil to improve in this facet as Federer did in his day to winning Grand Slams close to 40 years of age.
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These changes are not the result of any improvisation, but of an evolution of Rafa Nadal as a tennis player. Few things remain of the boy who did not give up a ball for loss and who was a real fronton for his rivals. The winner of 22 Grand Slams has been expanding his repertoire until physicality is not the key to his game.
Now he has a more than important serve and some hard groundstrokes that give him a power capable of counteracting the best on the circuit. Nadal, at 36, wants to continue winning and knows that the road ahead is not easy. He is sure that with the help of Moyá and López he can continue to enlarge his legend.
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Max Verstappen has once again claimed that he is the target of ‘British bias’ in the media after watching the fallout from his battle with Lando Norris. The three-time world champion’s defending was criticised by a number of drivers, including Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen and Norris shared a titanic battle at the Circuit of the Americas last weekend, but the flashpoint came at Turn 12 as the Dutchman deployed a signature tactic, lunging deep into the corner to get to the apex first before running both himself and his title rival off the road.
Norris opted to keep his foot in and overtook the Red Bull driver around the outside, although this decision landed him a five-second time penalty that dropped him back behind Verstappen in the general classification. This sparked a major debate with other drivers – Hamilton included – calling for the FIA to take action and outlaw this style of defending.
Verstappen has been frustrated by this debate. Quizzed by Viaplay in Mexico on whether he’d like to see the rules changed, he replied: “No, not really. But I have the wrong passport.” Asked if he was referring to a British passport, he confirmed as much.
“Yeah, it’s the wrong country, on that aspect… with complaining” he replied. “I love my passport but on that aspect, I should have had a different passport, actually.” The Dutchman also complained of ‘British bias’ earlier this season following comments made by Adrian Newey.
When asked about the debate surrounding Verstappen’s on-track conduct, former title rival Hamilton was quick to point out that the Dutchman has been employing these tactics for some time, dating back to their no-punches-pulled fight in 2021.
“It’s always been a grey area, that’s why he’s got away with it for so long,” Hamilton explained ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix. “They probably need to make some adjustments for sure.
“Also, we do have inconsistencies through rulings, weekend in, weekend out, obviously depending on which years it is. I mean, as a sport, we do need to level up on all areas and if you look at other global sports, they have full-time refs, for example, and I’m sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing for our sport.
“I experienced it many times with Max, you shouldn’t be able to just launch the car on the inside and be ahead and then you go off and still hold your position. So, they need to definitely work on this.”
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$200M Jeff Gordon teams up with Chase Elliott and Co. to decode the HMS driver behind the “Don’t judge me” old tweet
Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon teamed up with Chase Elliott and other HMS drivers in a lighthearted fun exercise for fans where they attempted to solve the mystery behind an old tweet from their current driver.
The anonymous tweet reads, “Don’t judge me, but I can’t wait to see the new twilight movie haha,” and it’s believed to belong to one of the HMS’s driver lineups, which includes Elliott, Kyle Larson, William Byron and Alex Bowman.
Jeff Gordan, who has a net worth of $200 million (according to Celebrity Net Worth), and HMS drivers tried to guess, but none of them were correct. Bowman and Elliott named Byron, while Byron went with Elliott, but it was Larson. He accepted that it was his tweet in 2011 and revealed that he likes Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight movie.
HMS shared the video of the fun investigative activity on Instagram with a caption:
“Hold on tight, spider monkey”
Watch the Jeff Gordon and HMS’s guesses below:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBjQ7EzP3A7/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=e5182e01-3688-440a-ae00-0bf669973e15&ig_mid=01331E07-1F15-4C86-B3DB-7587302F0125
Three out of four HMS drivers are still in contention for the 2024 NASCAR Cup championship. Larson and Byron are in good position in the playoffs points table, with 35 and 27 points above the cutline.
However, 2020 Cup champion Elliott is in danger of getting eliminated from title contention, as he’s 53 points behind the cutline heading to this weekend’s Homestead-Miami race.
In an interview with NBC Sports earlier this season, Jeff Gordon spoke about the competition between their two best drivers, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, for the regular season championship. Gordan wanted to see both top drivers perform well and race aggressively against each other while maintaining sportsmanship in their chase for the regular season title.
However, neither Larson nor Elliott won the championship; it was Tyler Reddick who clinched the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship. Speaking to NBC Sports, the four-time NASCAR Cup champion Jeff Gordon said:
“I think it’s pretty clear at Hendrick how we expect teams and drivers to race against one another and how they’ve got to go and compete not only against their competitors but against one another.
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“Kyle Busch is an a**”: Brad Keselowski publicly chastised his fierce NASCAR rival in front of over 150,000 spectators
Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski birthed one of the fiercest rivalries in NASCAR. The duo had multiple run-ins throughout their careers, but the seed of their feud was sown at the 2010 Xfinity Series race hosted by the Bristol Motor Speedway. In the aftermath, Keselowski publicly castigated Busch in front of over 150,000 fans during driver introductions.
Busch kicked off his Food City 250 from third place in his #18 Toyota while Keselowski began in 13th. However, as the 250-lap battle inched closer to its conclusion, the then-Penske Racing driver held the domination while the former #18 Joe Gibbs Racing driver fought hard for the lead.
After struggling to overtake for nearly a dozen laps, Busch, with 31 laps until the checkered flag dropped, lunged ahead of Keselowski, only to be wrecked from behind and lose the spot again.
However, the JGR driver quickly retaliated and spun out Keselowski’s #22 Dodge. The move propelled the #18 Toyota to the victory lane while the Penske driver fell from a potential win to settling in 14th place.
The bitter feeling inside Brad Keselowski surfaced during the Bristol Cup Series race driver introductions the following day. After Kyle Busch introduced himself, his fierce rival took the mic and blasted Busch with his “a**’ comment.
“Brad Keselowski, driver of the Penske Racing Dodge. Kyle Busch is an a**,” he said.
However, when asked why he slammed Busch, Keselowski said that Juan Pablo Montoya challenged that he can’t call the JGR driver an “a**”. It’s worth mentioning that the crowd’s roar on the Penske driver’s introduction notched 104.2 decibels.
“Sometimes you just don’t like a guy”: Kyle Busch publicly slams Brad Keselowski during their 2017 title fight
The bitter rivalry between Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski was such that both made unapologetic comments about the other from time to time. Despite the latter publicly extending an olive branch to the former in 2015, their relationship remained sour.
Max Verstappen addresses ‘British bias’ at Mexican GP after Lewis Hamilton put-down
$200M Jeff Gordon teams up with Chase Elliott and Co. to decode the HMS driver behind the “Don’t judge me” old tweet
