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Rafael Nadal is glad to have avoided any damage in Bastad ahead of the Paris Olympics, but he is not too happy with the level of his tennis and fitness.
The 38-year-old Nadal, who missed almost all of 2023 with a hip problem and has been limited to six events this year because of a muscle tear and fitness issues, lost 6-3, 6-2 in the Swedish Open final to Portuguese seventh seed Nuno Borges on Sunday.
After beating fifth seed Cameron Norrie on Thursday, Nadal won tough three-set matches against fourth seed Mariano Navone and Duje Ajdukovic in his next two rounds and was struggling by the end.
"The level was so far from what it should be. Probably the energy too. It has been a long week with long matches," Nadal said.
"Even if my body, I don't have damage, that's important - but mentally and physically, I'm not used to playing four days in a row and playing long matches.
"I need to analyse well and find the reason why I played that way, even if the energy wasn't right. Things like this can happen, and that's the situation. I don't have to lie or hide anything."
Nadal decided to skip Wimbledon to focus on preparations for the Olympics which are being played at Roland Garros, the venue of 14 of his 22 Grand Slam triumphs.
At the Games, Nadal will be looking to add to his singles gold from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and doubles victory at Rio in 2016.
Apart from singles in Paris, he will team up with French Open and Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz in doubles.
"I played the final, that's positive. I was able to play long matches without having an injury, that's good," Nadal said of his week in Sweden.
The former world No1 has played just six tournaments in 2024 due to injury while his ranking has slumped to 261.
"In some way I felt that I arrived here practicing much better than what I played in the tournament during the whole week. That's something that I am not satisfied with," he explained.
"I arrived here with the feeling that I was playing a good level and I was not able to show that during the whole week. That is something that I am not happy with.
"Anyway it's a final, so I can't say it's a bad result because it's the first final since a long time ago. But I was not able to feel myself comfortable enough during the whole week to be satisfied with the week of tennis that I played."
It has still been a productive week for Nadal, who won four matches in a row for the first time since 2022 and had his physical condition tested ahead of representing Spain at the Games.
While Nadal will be hoping for a better fortunes in Paris, it won't be easy. Serbian great Novak Djokovic will be aiming for gold to fill that one gap on his otherwise-impeccable resume, which includes 24 Grand Slam trophies.
Also eyeing a first gold will be stars like Poland's Iga Swiatek, who has won the French Open four of the past five years, and American Coco Gauff, the reigning US Open champion and runner-up to Swiatek at Roland Garros in 2022.
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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
The major Hashd factions linked to Iran:
Badr Organisation: Seen as the most militarily capable faction in the Hashd. Iraqi Shiite exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein set up the group in Tehran in the early 1980s as the Badr Corps under the supervision of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The militia exalts Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but intermittently cooperated with the US military.
Saraya Al Salam (Peace Brigade): Comprised of former members of the officially defunct Mahdi Army, a militia that was commanded by Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and fought US and Iraqi government and other forces between 2004 and 2008. As part of a political overhaul aimed as casting Mr Al Sadr as a more nationalist and less sectarian figure, the cleric formed Saraya Al Salam in 2014. The group’s relations with Iran has been volatile.
Kataeb Hezbollah: The group, which is fighting on behalf of the Bashar Al Assad government in Syria, traces its origins to attacks on US forces in Iraq in 2004 and adopts a tough stance against Washington, calling the United States “the enemy of humanity”.
Asaeb Ahl Al Haq: An offshoot of the Mahdi Army active in Syria. Asaeb Ahl Al Haq’s leader Qais al Khazali was a student of Mr Al Moqtada’s late father Mohammed Sadeq Al Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric who was killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba: Formed in 2013 to fight alongside Mr Al Assad’s loyalists in Syria before joining the Hashd. The group is seen as among the most ideological and sectarian-driven Hashd militias in Syria and is the major recruiter of foreign fighters to Syria.
Saraya Al Khorasani: The ICRG formed Saraya Al Khorasani in the mid-1990s and the group is seen as the most ideologically attached to Iran among Tehran’s satellites in Iraq.
(Source: The Wilson Centre, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation)
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