Rafael Nadal: What he said, really meant and definitely did not

Rafael Nadal Raps Yannick Noah

What  he said:

“When one kid says something it’s not painful for us."

Rafael Nadal kids not in his response to Yannick Noah’s allegations of systemic doping by Spain’s elite athletes.

Noah, writing for French daily Le Monde, said:

“Today if you don’t have the magic potion, it’s hard to win. How can a nation dominate sport virtually overnight like this?"

Noah began his article thus:

When I still milled around on the courts with my racket, we weren’t ridiculous, far from it, against our Spanish friends.

It was the same on the soccer fields, the basketball halls or on the roads of the Tour de France. Today they are running faster than us, are much more stronger and only leave us the bread crumbs.

We look like dwarves. Did we miss something? Did they discover some avant-garde techniques or training facilities that nobody before them had imagined?

Nadal reacted angrily to the Frenchman’s allegations.

He said:

"What he said is completely stupid. This guy does not deserve to write in newspapers anymore."

Nadal added:

He knows better than anybody that to say that today is a totally stupid thing because you know how many anti-doping controls we have during the season, year by year.

So in my opinion, the article that he wrote was from a kid and when one kid says something it’s not painful for us.

The French tennis federation were equally trenchant in their criticism.

Their statement read:

The French Tennis Federation wishes to express its disagreement with Yannick Noah’s comments made in Le Monde newspaper.

Against the plague of doping in sport, baseless accusations and provocative comments are inappropriate, and the worst attitude would be to give up.

What Rafael Nadal really meant:

“Sounds like French whine to me.”

What Rafael Nadal definitely didn’t:

“I’m so beefy because Alberto Contador’s butcher is mine too.”