Sunday in Madrid Andrey Rublev he won his second 1000m title in his career after that of Monte Carlo 2023 by beating Felix Auger-Aliassime in the third set. In the press conference the Russian tennis player admitted that he had played the entire tournament in precarious physical conditions. Here are his words:
“I’m still sick, and I think I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow for a complete check-up. I don’t know exactly what’s happening, because I’ve been sick for eight, nine days already and this is not normal. There’s no improvement, which is strange, because normally I’m sick for two, three days at most. Maybe still fever but nothing special. This time it’s the first time I’ve felt so sick in my life. Tomorrow we’ll find out what it is exactly, maybe it’s an angina my throat is completely blocked. And so I haven’t been able to swallow or eat for nine days and I have an incredible headache because of it. I won the tournament because I had injections, which kill the pain. So two, three hours without pain. Inside me I’m full of medications.”
“They gave me some kind of anesthesia on my toes because they somehow get inflamed and start to get twice as big and all the pressure starts to be on the bone, and when you have pressure on the bone you can’t even put your feet inside the shoe. The sensation is similar to when it is broken. That’s why they gave me anesthesia, so I couldn’t feel it. And at least I could play without thinking.”
I’m really happy that I was able to play all the matches well, and I think I showed an excellent level of tennis from the first. In the end I managed to win a title. And now it seems like the entire previous two weeks, those tournaments, never happened. Now I think the most important thing is to try to recover and be 100% ready for Rome.”
