When it comes to analyzing Rafael Nadal’s ongoing foot problem, there is nobody better to do so than Ángel Ruiz-Cotorro.
Ruiz-Cotorro is the long-time personal doctor of the 22-time Grand Slam champion and has also treated Juan Martin Del Potro, as well as Arantxa Sanchez. He currently serves as the Manager of the Clinical Mapfre de Medicina del Tenis which he set up to provide specialist care to tennis players of all abilities, as well as other athletes. Furthermore, he was also responsible for treating Spanish tennis players during every Olympic Games between 1996-2016.
“In medicine you have to be very discreet, we have a role that is to help, but always with the utmost discretion. Medicine is a very serious thing and you have to have respect for the patient,’ he said during an interview with El Partidazo de COPE.
“These days, for example, we hear many people talk about Rafa’s injury, because Rafa’s injury is described in the books, but nobody knows how the joints are and how all that process has been over the years. You have to be discreet, we have interpreted it that way and we have always done it that way, the doctor has to be in the shadows, the less he is called, the better.”
Whilst he may not like being in the spotlight, Ruiz-Cotorro has certainly been kept busy by Nadal who won a record 14th French Open title on Sunday. Throughout his time in Paris the Spaniard had to undergo injections into his foot which meant he had little or no feeling in it. In 2005 Nadal was diagnosed with Mueller-Weiss syndrome which is a rare degenerative condition that affects bones in the feet and causes chronic pain.
Ruling out that he is prepared to play Wimbledon by having more injections, Nadal and his team are exploring other options. On Tuesday he underwent pulsed radiofrequency stimulation which is a minimally invasive procedure which involves adjusting the way in which the nerve tissue functions in order to reduce or stop pain in the affected area.
“Rafa is following the process after the radiofrequency application the other day, it is progressing well, we have to see how things go in the next few hours, how everything evolves to see the effects in 2-3 days. What we have done is partially inactivate those nerves that sensitively influence that area,” his doctor explains.
“There are several nerves that are punctured, a total of three: the superficial, the deep and the tibial.” He added.
It is not the first time Nadal has been bothered by his foot after missing the second half of 2021 due to a flare up. Ruiz-Cotorro believes part of the reason behind that flare up was due to the pandemic where the tennis star was away from the court for an extended length of time due to the cancellation of tournaments.
“This is a very rare injury, I have rarely seen it in athletes of the world but it is an injury that we found in the case of Rafa. We met him in 2005 and he has been living with this injury through multiple stages and treatments, although we know that it is an injury that gradually degenerates due to the effort and demands of the competition,” he said.
“We have been looking for new resources, sometimes it has been more complicated for us, especially since the pandemic. This injury does not react well to rest, because he settles in, adapts, that’s why when he wanted to come back it bothered him. There we looked for a treatment that would last a year, but then everything got complicated again”.
It is understood that Nadal will gradually return to training at the end of the week to see how his foot has responded to the treatment. It is possible that he could have a second procedure done next week. As for Wimbledon it is still unknown if he will be ready in time for the Grand Slam which starts on June 27th.
