Rafael Nadal’s fury at Yannick Noah and calls for Laver Cup captain to be banned
Rafael Nadal once called for Yannick Noah to be removed as a columnist after the French tennis icon claimed that Spain’s sporting success was due to doping. The 1983 French Open champion wrote an opinion piece for French newspaper Le Monde in 2011 and attempted to sully the nation’s triumphs across different sports.
Noah – who is set to captain Team Europe in the Laver Cup this weekend – wrote: “Today, if you don’t have the magic potion, it’s hard to win. How can a nation dominate sport virtually overnight like this?” His shocking allegations caused Nadal to retort with: “What he said is completely stupid. This guy does not deserve to write in newspapers anymore.”
Noah’s claims came amid Spain’s dominance across tennis, football, basketball and cycling. The national team – then led by manager Vicente del Bosque – reigned as World Cup and European Championship holders, while Spain’s basketball team had claimed a World Cup, two European titles and an Olympic silver medal in a span of six years.
Cyclist Alberto Contador had won the Tour de France in three of the last five years, while Nadal had captured 10 of his eventual 22 Grand Slam titles and held the world No. 2 ranking. Noah’s column questioned why Spain had significantly advanced in their sporting accolades since his playing days, adding: “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 insisted that the Frenchman’s comments were “stupid” given the number of drug tests athletes must undergo. The Spaniard 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.
Noah’s remarks were denounced by the French Tennis Federation, whose 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.”
The 66-year-old has since spoken of his reverence for Nadal after his controversial comments 15 years ago. In 2017, he told El Pais: “Many times when I go to Spain I hear about it. I always try to say that I respect Rafa a lot as a person.
“I don’t know, simply I don’t know. I never said anything against him. I don’t want to be involved in a situation against him because it’s not real. I also know many people who speak about his way to be and the way he behaves with other people.
