By Adrián Mengana Martínez
At 23 years old, Sinner had to overcome all kinds of adversity and enormous media pressure after a positive test for doping – this situation prevented his presence at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games – to manage to have one of the best seasons in history.
The one born in San Candido won eight titles in the campaign, including two Grand Slam titles (Australian and United States Open), the ATP Finals in Turin and the Davis Cup in Malaga.
In addition, he lifted the trophy at the Masters 1000 in Miami, Cincinnati and Shanghai, and in the ATP 500 tournaments in Rotterdam and Halle, in addition to finishing the calendar year with a record of 73 wins and only six losses.
Of those wins, he reached 17 and only suffered five falls against players ranked among the top 10 in the ranking of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), and became the second player in the Open Era to finish a season with at least one set. won in all his matches, a feat previously achieved by Swiss star Roger Federer in 2005.
He rose to the top of the world ranking exactly by reaching the semifinals of the Roland Garros Open, after which he displaced the incombustible Serbian Novak Djokovic from first place.
Sinner has been at the top of the ranking for a total of 20 consecutive weeks and has a wide point difference over his immediate pursuer: 11,830 units against 7,915 of the German Alexander Zverev, while in third position is the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz (7,010) , who dealt the Italian three of his rare six setbacks in 2024.
The transalpine star is the first player, since 1993, to win the ATP Finals title and the Silver Salad in the same year. The last to achieve this was the German Michael Stich, who beat the American Pete Sampras in Frankfurt in the definition of the best of the year and then got three points for his country in the victory over Australia in Dusseldorf.
Regarding the doping situation, the presence of a banned synthetic anabolic steroid, called clostebol – derived from the male hormone testosterone – was indeed found in the racket player, while he competed in the Indian Wells Masters 1000, held in March, but the Tennis Integrity Unit understood that the ingestion was accidental.
However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed the tennis player’s case and asked for a suspension of between one and two years, a verdict that has not yet been determined.
For the moment and awaiting WADA’s decision, Sinner is already looking at 2025, when he will essentially have to defend the two Grand Slam crowns won in 2024 and go in search of Wimbledon and Roland Garros.
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