Rafael Nadal's Olympics is already a success – and he may just be getting started

RIO DE JANEIRO – As Rafael Nadal sat in a press conference room at the French Open 2 1/2 months ago, his left wrist encased in a blue cast, he didn't expect to be here.

"I found myself playing very well, Since Indian Wells (in March) I was playing great tennis. Arrived to Roland Garros, have to go out from there, not playing Wimbledon, not playing Toronto, you can imagine how sad I was," an exuberant Nadal said Thursday night, after he and partner Marc Lopez defeated Canadians Daniel Nestor and Vasek Pospisil in two tiebreaks to reach the Olympic men's doubles final.

The two, longtime friends, celebrated as if they had, indeed, already won gold. 

It was reminiscent of another Olympics, eight long years ago in Beijing, when two other top-five Grand Slam winners dropped to the court.

Roger Federer is not here, as he has shut down his season. Stan Wawrinka is not here, as he ... well, who knows.

But Nadal is, even though had this not been the Olympics, he probably wouldn't have made the trip.

His day Thursday was packed. He began with a tough grind of a straight-sets win over France's Gilles Simon, two hours and two minutes on a court that would favour the long rallies that both players both appreciate and master.

After a quick swing through the mixed zone (television only, and briefly at that), it was more than two hours before Nadal took the court again for doubles with Lopez, against the Canadians.

The history between Nadal and Lopez is a long one. They've been friends more than half their lives, roommates at a tennis club in Barcelona where both played interclub matches as teenagers. But Lopez, older by four years, was a good junior (a French Open junior doubles champion with Tommy Robredo back in 2000) who was struggling to have success on the pro tour at 5-foot-9, 160 pounds and without any huge weapons.

He nearly made it into the top 100 in singles back in 2004, but not quite.

In doubles, back in 2007 and 2008, Lopez was on the Challenger circuit playing with the likes of Marc Fornell-Mestres and Jeremy Swyngedouw and Gabriel Trujillo-Soler and Jose Checa-Calvo and having trouble getting anything going. His doubles ranking was in the high 100s, 200s, and it didn't seem as though it would happen for him. But his loyal friend Nadal never forgot him; he brought him in to partner him in the top-level ATP Tour tournaments in which he completed in doubles over the next few years.

They were a great team together and it turned out all Lopez needed was a foot in the door.  A year later he was in the top 25 and making a solid living of his own. This spring in Paris, he and Feliciano Lopez (another athlete in his mid-30s), won the French Open doubles title and when you look at the teams they defeated in the last four rounds, there were no shortcuts.

With all that history, and the fact that Nadal missed the 2012 Games in London because of injury and has never done anything in doubles, the moments after the win over Nestor and Pospisil were emotional for all.

The conditions were hardly ideal, with the match being pushed to a smaller field court (with no Hawkeye review) because of the rainout on Thursday. Nadal was vocal about not wanting to play on that court but in the end, the lack of replay probably benefited him as much as it hurt the Canadians.

The security was an issue with everyone trying to get on the court – listed with a capacity of about 1,800, it seemed much, more more intimate than that.

Guaranteed a silver, the two will go for gold Friday and you'd expected that Horia and Tecau and Florin Mergea of Romania, as competent as they are, won't pose the same threat the Canadians did.

Then, another quick trip through the mixed zone.

Before the gold-medal match, Nadal will take on Thomaz Bellucci of Brazil in a singles quarter-final that promises to be raucous and during which the Spaniard will find himself very much the non-favourite in terms of the fans.

The casualty in all this was the mixed doubles with compatriot and fellow French Open champion Garbiñe Muguruza, which was always a dodgy proposition at best.

Nadal would have had to play three matches on Thursday but for the rainout. Friday would have been the same but being still alive in singles and about to play for a gold medal in doubles, adding four more matches in four days was going to be a lot.

As well, Muguruza (who lost in the third round of the singles to Monica Puig of Puerto Rico) had just been eliminated in the quarter-finals of the women's doubles by Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova of Russia. So she was out of the medals, and she has a big tournament in Cincinnati beginning early next week.

So there will no longer be a possible triple-medal performance from Nadal. But even the notion of winning two medals (clearly within reach, and still with the possibility that both will be gold) is far beyond what he could have imagined just a few weeks ago.