The French tennis player ends up on the walls of Wimbledon for losing the longest match in the history of the tournament, but the list of illustrious losers is long…
At 6.18pm on 22 June 2010, the American John Isner and the Frenchman Nicolas Mahut entered Court 18 of Wimbledon. The match, suspended the following day due to darkness, ended on June 24, after 11 hours and 5 minutes of play, with the result 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-6(3), 70-68. The longest marathon in tennis history. Eliminated from the Paris tournament on Tuesday, Mahut, at 43 years old, ended an excellent career, especially in doubles: 5 Slams, 7 Masters 1000, the Davis Cup; 4 ATP singles titles. But it was a defeat that made him eternal. He knows it: “I wasn’t strong enough to make history with the results, that endless match will not be forgotten. At first I struggled to talk about it, now, when I return with my son to court 18 at Wimbledon and see the plaque with my name, I feel immense pride.”
the others
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Like Edgardo Andrada, Vasco da Gama goalkeeper who conceded Pelé’s thousandth goal at the Maracana on 19 November 1969. While everyone was carrying O Rei in triumph, El Gato Andrada pounded his fists on the ground. But he soon realized that that goal was the pass for eternity. In fact, he had it written on his business cards: “I conceded Pelé’s thousandth goal.”
There is already a line of goalkeepers ready for CR7’s thousandth. We enter history through an arch of triumph, but also through the narrow door of defeat. More than Achilles, we loved Hector, the loser, his poignant farewell to Andromache and little Astyanax. Rudyard Kipling is right, victory and defeat, two impostors, must be treated the same way. He wrote it to his son in 1910. Exactly a century before the Mahut-Isner marathon.