ANALYSIS: Assessing the Olympic Games resume´ and legacy of Rafael Nadal after Paris run concludes

Rafael Nadal is undoubtedly one of the greatest tennis players in history with a great legacy. Still, few remember the great legacy he left at the Olympic Games, so with his Olympic career now officially over, let's take a look at what exactly he did do at them in the years past.

The Olympic Games are not something you'll hear many tennis players mention when discussing their dreams. It's an important event for many, but the thing most of them dream of when they're little is being number one and winning Grand Slams. Those are the big prizes you can win in tennis, at least perception-wise, but more recently, we've seen more and more of them embrace the Olympics as something that's equally important. It wasn't always the case, but perhaps some legends like Nadal and Novak Djokovic giving them huge importance made a lot of them come around.

After all, one of the 'younger players', Alexander Zverev, called winning the gold medal the biggest thing you can win in tennis, and while he might be a little biased as a gold medalist who has no Grand Slamas, it's certainly remained something very prestigious and it only keeps growing in prestige with the young players. Think about it: if you're a tennis player, you're maybe going to get two good shots to win the gold medal, three if you're lucky, and four if you're an outlier like Novak Djokovic.

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The odds of getting that elusive gold medal are not that great. Chances are scarce, and very few get to do it. Just look at Novak Djokovic, who has never won gold at the Olympics, and it's not for a lack of trying. There just aren't many chances to do so.

You'll have far more chances winning a Grand Slam because most of the top players play dozens of those over the course of their career. Even players that aren't at the top can play 4-5 of Wimbledon's if they're a bit lucky and play the qualifiers well and that's not the case when it comes to Olympics. The rarity of them simply adds to the prestige of it and there is a lot prestige there.

When you look at someone like Djokovic, the sheer fact that he's been visibly obsessed with winning the gold medal for many years now shows that it is a big thing. He's achieved everything you can achieve in the sport, and yet he's obsessing over this thing that some might want you to believe doesn't matter. It does matter, and quite a bit so.

Rafael Nadal has often put the Olympics first in his career.

When it comes to Rafael Nadal, it always mattered. He's never been a player that downplayed any sort of achievement, even if we're talking about some minor event. Even now, at his age and with many trophies in his cabinet, the Spaniard recently told off reporters who suggested that the Bastad Open event didn't matter because it wasn't a big event. To him, they all matter, and the Olympics certainly did as well.

So what sort of legacy does Nadal leave at the Olympics after ending his Olympic career recently? A brilliant one, actually, especially when you put it into perspective. He's been around for two decades, which is the exact number of years between his first and last Olympics, but he didn't play at all of them.

The Spaniard's first Olympics came in 2004 when he was 18 years old. He didn't do that well, struggling to do much on the hard courts in Athens, finishing 17th overall. Nothing special, right, but it gets better.

He would fare much better at his next games in Beijing in 2008, when he went all the way to win gold by beating Fernando Gonzalez in the final. He bested Novak Djokovic in the semi-final, which many considered the final because whoever won that one was a huge favourite to win gold, and it rang true when he defeated Gonzalez. It was a very hard one for Djokovic to swallow, which shows that even when they were both young, they cared a lot about the games. The Spaniard would then miss the 2012 Olympics in London but return at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

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Those would go down in history for him as he was able to win the gold medal in doubles, becoming only the 2nd man ever since the Open era to win both singles and doubles gold at the Games. The only man before him who did was Nicolas Massu, who had a dream Olympics in Athens, winning gold in singles and doubles at the same games. Nadal didn't do that, of course, but he was able to join him on that list by adding the doubles gold in Rio, and that's certainly quite notable as well.

They're not the only players who did it, as there were some before, but those happened over 100 years ago, and we're not really going to put them in the same bracket. The Spaniard would then miss the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo due to his various injuries and conclude his Olympics career recently in Paris. The Paris experience was pretty interesting, even though it was medal-less. We got to see him battle Novak Djokovic for the 60th time at the Games, which is a pretty nice moment in tennis history. It wasn't the best match for Nadal, but he had a decent second set, which many fans will remember fondly. The doubles with Alcaraz was also a nice passing-the-torch moment for Spanish tennis, which will certainly be remembered fondly by many, including Alcaraz himself.

Despite losing to Novak Djokovic in his final Games, Nadal's legacy will live forever.

The way Paris went wasn't a hit on his legacy because that is safe. His tennis legacy is safe, and his legacy at the Olympics is also safe because you can see that the legacy he left at the games is fantastic and which hasn't been done many times. Only two men have ever done what he's been able to do, and he's one of them. As we know, tennis has been around for many years, so there were plenty of chances to do so, but it seems like it's not that easy to do. Go figure.

His achievements will certainly be matched in the future, but we live in the present, and we celebrate greatness in the present. Nadal is also tied for second place in all-time standing when it comes to medals, as he has two. That's only with basically two legit appearances at the games because, in the first ones, he was quite young and not experienced enough, while the last ones weren't games where he was expected to do much.

He missed London and Tokyo as well, so when you put that into perspective, he's been really clinical at the Games. Basically, when he played, he left with a medal, which is really impressive. In fact, when we compare it to his peers, only Andy Murray has a better legacy at the Games than he does. Murray is ahead of him in the all-time rankings because he has three medals at the games. The Brit won two gold medals in singles, which is incredible, and also a silver medal with Laura Robson at the London Olympics, finishing above Nadal.

Now, you can argue that part of that and Nadal's legacy is that some players are not taking the games seriously, and you'd be right. They aren't, but for the most part in recent history, when Nadal was playing, most were taking the games seriously. Roger Federer took them seriously but was only able to win a gold in doubles at the 2008 Olympics. That's it; that's his only gold. Of course, Djokovic never won a gold medal, despite taking them very seriously, likely more than everybody else, though he has a medal of a different colour.

Andy Murray, as we know from his legacy, took them very seriously, so all the biggest rivals were there and competing. You can't really say oh, it only happened because nobody was taking it seriously. No, there were great rivals there who competed heavily for the medals, but Nadal just happened to outperform them. Sometimes, they outperformed him, much like on the main Tour.

The conclusion remains the same. To carve out that type of legacy at the games is truly notable and certainly one of the most amazing achievements of his career. It's not talked about often because his legacy is just too great to really break it down into smaller segments. He's one of the greatest tennis players of all time, with 22 Grand Slmas and numerous trophies and records on top. But it needs to be noted at this very moment because the match he played with Alcaraz a few days ago is the final time we've seen him compete at the games. It's over, and now we can look back at the legacy he's left at the games and celebrate it because it's been truly remarkable in a similar way to how remarkable his career has been.

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