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Toni Nadal suggests Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz playing doubles at the Paris Olympics could absolutely happen if his nephew feels healthy and ready. In May, Nadal announced he would likely be retiring in 2024 and revealed that being ready and healthy for the French Open and Paris Olympics would be his big goal.
Since Nadal will be 38 and playing his last Olympics, many would like to see the Spanish tennis icon team up with 20-year-old Alcaraz. "If Rafael is in good condition, then I think they would be a very good pair. I assume that Carlos is in good condition, so we'll see.
Let's see if there is a possibility of winning an Olympic gold in singles or doubles," Toni Nadal told Onda Cero.
How Nadal, Alcaraz feel about the prospect of playing doubles together?
Alcaraz, who grew up idolizing Nadal, admitted earlier this year that playing doubles with his idol "would be a dream." "Let's see how he's doing and how he's going, you know, in this year.
Hopefully, he's going great. But yeah, for me, it could be a dream to play doubles with him," Alcaraz said in May. Recently, Nadal was asked about the possibility of playing doubles with Alcaraz in Paris. "Regarding the fact of playing doubles with Carlos, I have not had the slightest conversation with him in that regard.
But I would also like and it would be a good motivation, another incentive for me to be able to close my Olympic cycle playing with Carlos, with everything he is achieving, with the young people and with the great future he has ahead of him," Nadal told Diario AS in September.
If Nadal is healthy, the general expectation is that he will indeed play doubles with Alcaraz at the Paris Olympics. In 2016, Nadal won the doubles gold medal with Marc Lopez at the Rio Olympics.