Italian Jannik Sinner has announced that he will miss the Paris Olympics due to tonsillitis. Sinner is not the only prominent tennis player to withdraw from the Games due to health problems, but Yannick’s loss remains the most sensitive of the tournament. He became the first ATP ranking leader since Pete Sampras in 2000 to miss the Olympics.
Many in Italy hope that Yannick will recover quickly and be in top condition during the toughest part of the season in North America. However, there is a not-so-small group of haters who are making fun of Sinner. At the same time, his girlfriend, Russian tennis player Anna Kalinskaya, is also doing so.
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About a week ago, Sinner and Kalinskaya were having fun in Sardinia, taking a short vacation after Wimbledon. A normal situation that initially did not cause a backlash in Italy. But after Sinner was withdrawn from the Olympics, the situation changed. Social networks were filled with aggressive comments from Italians criticizing Yannick for his vacation with Anna. It was the holiday with the girl that suddenly seemed to many to be the cause of Sinner’s health problems.
“This is Sinner’s tonsillitis,” is an example of one of the more caustic comments posted under the photo of Yannick and Anna during their vacation.
Jannik Sinner and Anna Kalinskaya on holiday in Sardinia
Photo by: CHI MAGAZINE
The media did not ignore Sinner’s situation either, including major media outlets such as Corriere della Sera. The publication’s journalist Massimo Gramellini compared Yannick to his compatriot Matteo Berrettini, who dropped out of the top 100 after an affair with model Melissa Satta. Matteo recently broke up with Satta and immediately began his ascent. Berrettini won the Gstaad tournament last week and is now fighting for the title in Kitzbühel.
It is quite possible that Matteo will achieve his goal and enter the next US Open Grand Slam tournament as a top seed, meaning he will be among the top 32 in the ATP rankings. And later on, a return to the top 10 or at least the top 20 can be considered. Still, Berrettini has a powerful serve and is technical enough to be among the tennis elite. Gramellini notes that at the moment it is as if Sinner has switched places with Matteo. “Berrettini is gradually moving up the ATP rankings and is reaching his best physical form, while Sinner seems to be in the process of decline because he is now ‘in a relationship’. “Yannick is turning into a field hospital: he is worried about a cold, dizziness and now a fever attack on the eve of the Olympic Games, which is causing great concern,” the journalist writes.
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At the end of his column, Gramellini still accuses social media of being too harsh and says he does not believe Sinner has seriously violated the regime due to his relationship with Kalinskaya.
“They sit outside until nine o’clock at the latest and drink mineral water. If anyone seriously believes that a relationship with a girl takes away energy, then only priests (and not all of them) should participate in the Olympic Games,” Gramellini concluded.
Two-time TBS champion Svetlana Kuznetsova followed all the posts and reasonably defended Sinner and Kalinskaya, whose criticism she considers completely inappropriate.
“It was obvious that Anna Kalinskaya would be blamed for Yannik Sinner’s refusal to participate in the Olympics. Why is it obvious? The girls of famous players always get more. Paula Badosa, Stefanos Tsitsipas’s girlfriend, is also constantly criticized. And here everything is aggravated by the fact that Yannick is now the first scandal, he has a strong rivalry with Carlos Alcaraz, and Anna appeared in Sinner’s life only recently. Haters will blame her for any failure of a tennis player. The network is already full of articles, they publish photos of a couple from Italy with mocking captions: “This is Sinner’s tonsillitis.”
I even saw comments that Yannick withdrew from the Olympics in support of Anna – they say that his country was oppressed at the Games and he is taking revenge on her. Completely absurd, of course. Speaking of criticism of Sinner and his vacation in Sardinia. After Roland Garros, Carlos Alcaraz also went to Ibiza, where he partied, drank alcohol and, in a word, celebrated a great victory. Then he won Wimbledon and all the critics fell silent. And then Yannick went on vacation with his girlfriend and then fell ill. Well, yes, this happens. Why do people care where and how he rests? It turns out that if Carlos had not won Wimbledon, would people still remember Ibiza for him? The athlete is free to choose his own vacation time. From my own experience I know that sometimes a break is necessary, even at the expense of tennis. And you never know where you will find it and where you will lose it,” Kuznetsova wrote on her Telegram channel.
Svetlana Kuznetsova
Photo: From the personal archive of Svetlana Kuznetsova.
It is difficult to question Kuznetsova’s words in any way. Yannick has always had health problems, which often manifest themselves on the court. Lately there have been fewer of them, which has largely determined his rise to the top spot in the world rankings. Now the Italian’s situation has worsened again, but there is no talk of a global decline, as was the case with Berrettini, a comparison with whom in general seems inappropriate. Yannick is more than 1,000 points ahead of Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz in the world rankings, and has not reached at least the quarter-finals in all major tournaments of the season (most often he has won titles, including the Australian Open, or has reached at least the semi-finals).
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Moreover, it is not about relations with Kalinskaya, who is rapidly improving on the court this season. And Anna certainly cannot be equated with Melissa Satta, whose scandalous temper was much talked about not only in the Italian media, but also by Matteo Berrettini himself.
Missing the Olympics is an offensive turn for Sinner, but objectively, on Parisian soil, the Italian did not have much of a chance of gold medals compared to the same Carlos Alcaraz, who recently beat him at Roland Garros. If your health is far from ideal, it is best not to take any risks. Sinner did just that. Now he will be able to properly prepare for the difficult part of the season in the United States, where he has excellent chances of claiming major titles, including the second Slam of his career at the US Open.
