Don’t stop Jannik, number 1 wants to grow again – Stefano Barigelli’s editorial

Sinner in one year took tennis. Continuous and inexorable growth, like his game. We never had a champion like that. I mean so perfect in being on the pitch and outside, perfect in self -control, in the ability to almost never miss the decisive point. Perfect because it always does the right thing, even when the pressure is unbearable, which always says the right phrase, whether it wins and or it forgives. In Australia he dominated from the moment the tournament began, until the final with Zverev, which is still the number two in the ATP ranking. A year ago Sinner had had to reassemble two sets in Medvedev, revealing the deep essence of his talent to the world: to be clinging to the point, at the game, the set, to the game until possible. Indeed, beyond the possible.

Yesterday against Alcaraz he would have struggled more, but the Spaniard from Wimbledon has not found himself again. We will see him again at his levels in Paris, sure. Only Alcaraz today can think of beating Sinner. Djokovic struggles against his inevitable twilight, he does it in his own way, distilling here and there pearls of great game, but no athlete in the history of sport has ever defeated time. Nobody is twenty years old forever. The season of the three phenomena (Federer, Nadal and precisely Nole) goes to close with the last flashes of the Serbian. What we are experiencing has an absolute number one, Sinner, and a contender, Alcaraz. The generation of Medvedev, Tsitsipas and Zverev, who has often fought unnecessarily against the three monsters, now no longer has the strength to impose himself. Sinner has more than Alcaraz the ferocious will to improve, the application, the determination. It is not just competitive malice. All the champions have it, in various shapes and dosages. Sinner in this year, from Melbourne to Melbourne, grew up more than the Spaniard. It has remained obsessively concentrated on its mission to develop strong points and transform the weak ones positive. Despite the clostebol case.

The Gazzetta on the question has already expressed itself underlining the opacity of Wada and the unjustified decision, given to hand, to oppose the acquittal decided by the anti -doping agency of international tennis. The Australian Open has better clarified those who have an interest that Sinner is stopped, just read the German Bild. It will be a political verdict, not legal. The principle of liability of the athlete when it comes to a useless steroid for a tennis player in an infinitesimal quantity, is antihistoric as Wada herself has recognized. The tools available today manage to identify quantities lower than the nanogram of substances that cannot make anything to the performance and which are present in very popular drugs and foods. But if Wada thinks like this too, why not immediately review the rules? Why not make them apply for the case of the most important tennis player in the world? The entire sports system of this country, from the government to the Coni, to Fedentennis must insist on this principle. It would be absurd if Sinner was stopped on the basis of rules that has already decided to change. I don’t know, on the contrary, I don’t think, Sinner can make one think of a religious experience as Foster Wallace of Federer wrote. But for sure the boy has the mystical of tennis and one cannot help but be admired in front of the curve of his growth.

Sinner belongs to that group of great champions in which the head prevails over the body. Even when in the middle of a slam he has the chills of cold and tremble his hands for a stomach crisis, even when he is under and the game seems lost, even when he is not in the day, in the end he finds the winning answer in his head. And the body adapts. Sinner has been a fixed thought for months: Wimbledon. Let it play, let us have fun.