Rafael Nadal said he will not compete at Wimbledon next month, as expected, and will instead turn his focus to this summer’s Paris Olympics, where he is set to play in the singles draw and partner in doubles with recently crowned French Open champion Carlos Alcaraz.
Nadal, 38, announced his decision to skip Wimbledon, where he lifted the trophy in 2008 and 2010, in a statement Thursday on social media, citing the same concerns about having to prepare his body to play on grass then switch back to playing on clay that he mentioned after his first-round loss to Alexander Zverev at the French Open last month. The Olympic tennis tournament will be back at Roland Garros, where Nadal has won a record 14 French Open titles.
“We believe that the best for my body is not to change surface and keep playing on clay until then,” he wrote.
The 22-time Grand Slam champion already has some Olympic hardware. He won a gold medal in singles in Beijing in 2008 and a gold in doubles alongside Marc López in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but he has never competed at the Olympic Games on his favorite surface — this year is the first time the Olympic event will be played on clay since Barcelona in 1992.
The tournament runs from July 27 to Aug. 4.
Nadal will play a clay-court tournament in Bastad, Sweden, where he hasn’t competed since 2005, to prepare for the Games. He has played just 16 singles matches since the start of 2023 because of injury issues including a surgically repaired hip and nagging problem with his abdominal muscle.