There is an excellent extensive interview with Carlos Moyá via Jot Down Cultural Magazine, it's entirely in Spanish, & there is some great insight about Rafa via his very close friend Charly. Check out the entire Spanish Interview.
In his book about the 2008 Wimbledon final, Jon Wertheim, of Sports Illustrated, relates with admiration how Toni had instilled certain values of humility and 'normality' in his nephew that were what made him special. What influence has Toni had on Rafa?
Of course his uncle played the initial part, but the sportsman and athlete comes first. Rafa would have been a genius under any circumstances. He was born with certain characteristics and qualities that have turned him into what he is. Then things were added with the help of his uncle, but I think the humility, the values and all those things come from the family. I believe his uncle saw him one or two hours a day at first and he spent the rest of the time with his parents and his sister. The values Rafa has were instilled in him by his family, by his parents that is. Then Toni added his bit too, helping Rafa not to forget he is very humble because his family brought him up that way.
And what role does Toni play as trainer, beyond being a familiar figure in the stand?
Let's see... he really helps him a great deal. He's certainly a great trainer. Rafa plays in a very special way, the way his uncle taught him, but we're talking here about a superathlete with an unbelievable mentality and with much more talent than people think.
O: What should we read into the recent declarations by Rafa when he stated he "wasn't a child any longer" with respect to his relationship with his uncle?
But it's a fact! You can't treat someone the same when he's 15 and when he's 25 or when he hasn't won anything compared with when he has won ten Grand Slams. Life is like that and you have to adapt to it. When you're 15 maybe you can't refute an order from your trainer but you can at 25. It's by talking that people understand one another and what he said shouldn't be taken badly, he had no intention of irritating anyone, he was just stating a fact.
O: How do you succeed in being humble if you've been special from the age of eight, if everybody tells you you're special, if you live a very different life and you spend your adolescence and youth with a court of adulators and sponsors?
Are you referring to Rafa?
O: To Rafa and practically any of you top flight sportsmen who have gone through something very similar to this.
I think that the nearer the top one gets the more conscious one becomes of the difficulties involved and how tough it has been. I know not very humble people in the sport who haven't got to the top and, on the other hand, those that have reached the top are humbler. It's because of what I said: when you are at the top you can see what you've had to go through to get there, it makes you see reality and be conscious of how important putting in a great deal of work is.
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