The Rise of Jannik Sinner: From Skiing to Tennis Stardom

Jannik Sinner was born on August 16, 2001 in San Candido, Italy (in German it is called Innichen), a mountain town located in the province of Bolzano, in the Italian part of Tyrol, very close to the border with Austria. Jannik is one of two children (the other is called Marc) that Hanspeter and Siglinde Sinner have; his father owns and cooks a restaurant in a ski lodge, and his mother is a waitress in the family business. The Sinners are Italians of German origin.

Jannik began studying at the Walther Economic Institute in Bolzano. He was smart, that’s for sure. Clever and, since he was a child, more quiet than unruly. But the family was surprised when the child, at three or four years old, began to show a natural predisposition for unusual sports. That crazy kid, skinny and redheaded, with green eyes, very white skin like almost all redheads, was good at everything. He loved soccer, he was an ax at skiing (the almost obligatory sport in the area where he was born) and he had fun playing tennis. This was his third hobby, not his first.

The father preferred that the boy dedicate himself to skiing, which was his passion. Jannik complied and quickly stood out. At eight years old he won a national slalom championship. The thing seemed, then, decided. But when the boy was about twelve years old, he stopped to think for a moment. I’m good at football, he told himself, but there are eleven of us on the field and on top of that there is a coach who says what to do, and I like to make my own decisions. The ski? It’s also cool and I’m good at it too, but there’s one thing: if you make just one mistake, you can’t win anymore. Tennis, however, has it all: I decide what to do and how; and, this above all, you can win until the last moment, until you lose the last ball of the last game of the last set. Until that moment, victory is possible even if you lose by a lot. So I prefer tennis. I will be a tennis player That was the reflection of a twelve-year-old boy, according to what he himself recounted.

He was good at tennis, very good, but he didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary, at least as a child. He put himself in the hands of a veteran coach, Ricardo Piatti, who did see clearly what was hidden in that skinny and serious boy who did not like to lose at all. Jannik was thirteen when he left the Alps (and school; he didn’t make it past the fourth year, although he intends to get his degree) to settle in Bordighera, on the Riviera, with his coach.

At first nothing happened. She won and lost. When he lost, or when he was losing, he would get very angry. Piatti taught him to control himself and show a face of ice under the cap that he likes to wear when he plays. He no longer breaks rackets with blows when he gets angry, those were childhood sins.

Until, when he was more or less around 16, the transformation took place. Jannik hit the stretch and stood at 1.88 meters. He cultivated his body until he became what everyone knew he would end up being: an athlete with a physical strength difficult to guess from his perpetually skinny build. And the victories began to arrive. At first they were youth tournaments and even several Challengers (the second category of “big” tennis, behind the ATP Tour and ahead of the ITF). He was already making money. Not much. But the most important thing was the feeling of having succeeded, of having hit the nail on the head with his vocation. At the age of 17, when he won his first Challenger tournament (the one in Bergamo) and turned professional, he did not know that in a town in Murcia there was a boy almost two years younger than him, named Carlitos, who loved to have fun playing tennis. And win. I mean, the same as him.

It would be idle and also very boring to recount Jannik Sinner’s successes as a tennis player. Tennis is a sport in which statistics are given great importance, some of them somewhat silly.: who was the youngest to win an ATP 500 tournament, who won one of the top ten in the world when he was younger, who took the longest to serve and at what speed, who has won the most tournaments dressed in a green shirt and after coughing twice; those things. But the skinny redhead from the Alps drew attention. The greats saw him play. Roger Federer, who for twenty years has been to tennis what God the Father is to the Christian religion, said: “That kid is just as strong with the ball with his right hand as with the two-handed backhand; beware the”. Novak Djokovic (who would be the Holy Spirit) said: “I see in him things that I do. And he is convinced that he can beat anyone. So I know what awaits me.” And Jesus Christ, that is, Rafa Nadal, did not limit himself to praising him but took him to Adelaide (Australia) during the pandemic break, to train with him for two weeks. Neither of them has forgotten it.

The pandemic thing was very curious. Sinner proved that he was not an ice type, as many believed by watching him play. Aware that Italy was one of the countries in the world hardest hit by covid-19, he donated 12,500 euros to the doctors in Bergamo, to lend a hand. And he had a tremendous idea: created the hashtag #SinnerPizzaChallenger and offered to donate ten euros to the fight against the virus for each photo sent to him. Of course, it had to be a photo of a homemade pizza in which appeared something that remotely resembled Sinner’s own face… or that of any Italian. There is no way of knowing how much money he took out, but the idea caused laughter across the country. After all, genius or not, he was still a 19-year-old boy. If you don’t think of these things at 19, well, when are you going to think of them, right?

Already as a professional and sunk in the depths of the ATP classification, in November 2019 he beat Australian Alex de Miñaur to a sovereign beating and won his first major tournament. The following year (19 years old) he won the Sofia tournament. In 2021 he won in Melbourne, again in Sofia, in Washington and in Antwerp. They started to get scared of him. He passed over figures like the French Monfils or the Argentine Schwartzman. He still couldn’t beat Djokovic or Nadal; He never played with Federer, despite the fact that he himself admits that he is his favorite player. But they began to call him nicknames. They called him Sinner (logical; it is the translation of his last name into English), the Fox because of the color of his hair and of course assassins, because on the track he showed an absolute lack of mercy. And an extraordinary talent.

I had already heard of Carlos Alcaraz; more than that, they had become friends. In the summer of 2022, Alcaraz had won in Miami and Barcelona, ​​he had swept the Madrid Open after mercilessly kicking none other than Nadal, Djokovic and another of the greats, the German Zverev. But the Umag tournament arrived (July 2022) and Sinner crushed the Spanish tennis player in an agonizing match in which Alcaraz ended up not knowing what to do, what to invent against that beast that, on the track, manifested the same facial expressiveness as the sphinx of Giza. But he had already attracted powerful attention in Paris (Roland Garros) and London (Wimbledon).

And here comes the most important thing. Alcaraz is the tennis Mozart of our decade. He is full of inventiveness, vital passion, strength, imagination and unattainable talent. He is the heir to Nadal. Sinner, however, is Verdi: sometimes less brilliant, but he has plenty of energy, spectacularity, immense elegance, of course also talent, efficiency and instinct. His idol, it is said, is Federer. And with both, Alcaraz and Sinner, the same thing happens that has happened for twenty years with the two great teachers of the previous generation: they grow when they play against each other. Their matches are spectacular, much more than those that each of the two plays against any other. And they are great friends. They love each other very much… and they need each other to improve. They both know it.

Tennis fans will never forget, no matter how many years pass, the fourth of the six official matches that the two boys have played to date. It was in the quarterfinals of the US Open, on September 8, 2022. A four and a half hour battle in which both were completely emptied. It was tremendous, something like this had rarely been seen. Alcaraz won, who ended the match by emotionally applauding his friend… and who won the tournament, which took him to No. 1 in the world. But that match, which is among the best of all time (like the legendary 2008 Wimbledon final, Nadal-Federer), made it clear that, with the Holy Trinity (Federer, Nadal and Djokovic) on the verge of retirement, the time of two very young giants arrives who, if nothing happens, will rule the world of tennis for many years. Sinner would recognize him later: “This has been the most painful defeat of my life.” But he also knew that it was the prelude to glory. That glory that is about to arrive.

Revenge, if it is possible to speak of revenge, came in the semifinals of the Miami tournament, on April 1. Alcaraz was the champion of the previous year and needed the victory to recover the number 1 in the world. But Sinner, in front, charged with such ferocity and with such skill that he achieved the unheard of: goring his rival without mercy, leaving him without ideas and breaking the physical resistance of the indomitable Spaniard, who ended up kneeling. When the two boys (because they are a couple of kids, don’t forget this) embraced at the end of the terrible duel, Alcaraz told his friend: “You have it, you have the tournament. Go get him. win it. I will be your fan in the final”. And Sinner, something also very rare, smiled.

It could not be. The physical effort of that match left Sinner exhausted, something that is not easy to see either. He lost in the final against a concrete wall: the Russian Medvedev, who spent the game returning ball after ball waiting for the Italian’s mistake, while the latter gradually sank until, as the bullfighters would say, he doubled.

It is likely that we will rarely see anything like this. The two new world tennis monarchs are, physically and mentally, finishing up. There is still who beats them, although the number of those privileged is reduced with each passing day. Alcaraz visibly wins in maturity and serenity. The same thing happens to Sinner, who also has his downs and his bad moments. Both are building each other.

So great and happy days await us.

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The oryx (or oryx) of Arabia (Orix Leucoryx) it’s a Artiodactyl mammal of the Bovidae family. There are very few: it is not easy to become an oryx. It is characterized by its white fur, its black and fast legs, and by two large, almost helical, rectilinear horns, which give it an undeniable elegance… and a lot of danger.

A year ago right now, on April 9, 2022, Carlos Alcaraz appeared in this section. The animal with which he resembled her was the cheetah.. You will know that the cheetah is an African predator and that it usually hunts ruminant animals, whether they are impalas, Thomson’s gazelles or small antelopes such as Kirk’s dicdic. But the cheetah shares its space with the oryxes, whether they are those of Arabia or any of the other three species that exist.

The cheetah knows well that the graceful and graceful oryx is the biggest prize. But it is also the most difficult. That animal is, in the first place, very large; in secondextremely clever, as much as the cheetah can be. And then there are those formidable horns capable of crossing it from side to side without hesitation. It is not enough to be a cheetah; it takes to be very nice cheetah to beat an oryx.

When they face each other, anything can happen. Sometimes the oryx falls. Other times it is the cheetah that has to run away, usually wounded. But it is very easy to imagine that both bugs admire each other and, deep down, they need each other. There is no greater triumph for the cheetah than defeating an oryx. And there is no greater glory for an oryx than defeating a cheetah.

They both learn with their fights. They make each other better. That’s what counts.