Richard Mille RM 35-03 'Rafael Nadal' Pastel Blue Quartz TPT

This is the same Rafael Nadal watch as its salmon sibling, now rendered in cool pastel blue, and rather than retell its story it is worth looking closely at the openworked dial, where a small ON and OFF indicator sits among the exposed mechanism. That little switch points to this watch's cleverest and most distinctive feature, and to one of Richard Mille's favourite habits: refusing to accept even the humble automatic winding rotor as a fixed given.

The feature is called the butterfly rotor, and it is a genuine rethinking of how an automatic watch winds itself. An ordinary automatic has a fixed rotor that swings and winds constantly, whether the wearer wants it to or not. This one instead has a rotor shaped like a butterfly, with two wings, and the wearer can change its configuration at the push of a button. In one position the wings are deployed to maximise winding, feeding the mainspring efficiently for someone whose day is relatively still; press the pusher and the wings fold, reducing the winding so that an active wearer, moving hard and fast, does not over-tension the spring and strain the movement. The ON and OFF indicator on the dial shows which mode is engaged, so the state of the winding is always known at a glance. It hands the wearer control over the very heart of the watch, letting them tune how it winds to how they live, and it turns quietly at the centre of the skeletonised mechanism where anyone can watch it work.

That kind of control matters especially on a watch built for an athlete. This is Nadal's signature line, engineered to be feather-light and shock-resistant so it can be worn through the most physical tennis in the world without being felt, and the ability to manage the winding is part of that same philosophy of building a watch to survive genuine, punishing use rather than a quiet life in a drawer.

Where this version departs from the warm salmon one is entirely in its mood, because it is cool and fresh rather than warm. The case is a soft, pale pastel blue, a gentle baby-blue Quartz TPT, and it is worn on a deep blue strap, the two blues playing light against dark. Scattered across the accent ring, the crown, and the details of the dial are playful pops of pink, orange, and yellow, little bursts of colour that keep the watch lively and fun. It is summery and joyful and unmistakably confident, a burst of colour in a cooler key than its salmon sibling, and it suits the energy of the man it is named for just as well.

Beneath the colour, everything is the familiar Richard Mille package: the curved tonneau case held together by spline screws, the movement built on a grade 5 titanium baseplate and skeletonised until almost nothing but structure remains, the whole thing feather-light and built to be worn hard. It is the same swing-proof, weightless Nadal marvel, simply dressed in cool pastel blue and showing off, at its heart, the butterfly rotor that lets its wearer command how it winds.

That is what this pastel-blue RM 35-03 adds to the story. It takes the featherlight, shock-proof tennis watch of the athlete who started the whole Richard Mille adventure and renders it in a cool, joyful palette, and it foregrounds the clever butterfly rotor, the adjustable winding system that hands control of the mechanism to the person wearing it. Light, tough, endlessly engineered, and now cool and summery in blue, it wears both its cleverness and its colour with complete ease.