For himself and for the history of our sport. Sinner and the temple to conquer.

London. "Magnani is happy," the Roman actress said of herself from her top-floor apartment when, at 5:30 a.m. on March 21, 1956, an American journalist informed her she had won the Oscar. The first in film history to be awarded to a non-native English-speaking actress. Magnani was afraid of flying, which is why she didn't go to Hollywood to collect the statuette, but that night she broke the glass ceiling. She broke the taboo. She flew.

What Jannik Sinner will be trying to do today, from the 17th onwards, is to claim the title of the 138th edition of the Championships, to bring home a title that Italy has only won in the women's doubles. Not a title, though, but the Title. Since 1877, Wimbledon has elected 14 nationalities as king. Italy is nowhere to be found: we show up at the final banquet for the first time in 2021, Berrettini gives us the illusion of a set and then spars for Djokovic's triumph. July 11th, a Sunday where London would have spoken Italian anyway, ten miles from Wimbledon. Wembley, basilica outside the walls: Donnarumma hypnotizes a nation and its penalty takers, we are champions of Europe, the embrace between Mancini and Vialli. Tears. Memories.

Last year, Jasmine Paolini tried again, in the most unexpected of finals, but once again, the grass yielded a verdict we didn't like. Jas, the loose cannon of our tennis, was also rejected. Today, Jannik is trying to take us to the moon, a dimension we don't know and perhaps don't know how to handle. Even the haters have appeared , just think. Of Sinner and those who talk about Sinner. Regardless. Damned drift. A victory would knock them out for at least a day because by now the ball has started rolling and there's a risk of an avalanche. Jannik keeps going, sometimes even too hard, but he doesn't have many other options. Breaking a taboo has its consequences, and not all of them align with the planets as we'd like. Without invoking Enzo Ferrari's opinion ("In Italy, everything is forgiven except success"), Marcell Jacobs, for example. A rocket fired into the hyperuranion, Olympic gold in the 100 meters, planet and language of the Martians. On that August 1st, still in 2021, and may God bless that year, Italy discovered an unfamiliar speed. But then it struggled to keep its seat belts fastened, and so it skidded and skidded on words and judgments.

Sinner is gradually getting to the point of reckoning. He's already won three Slams, after all, but if you survive the grass-eating bullfight in the arena beyond the Doherty Gates, you can shape history as well as write it. Fourteen flags and we still have nothing; the time is ripe for the zero to disappear. Taboo is the enemy of history; it's time to make it clear here at Wimbledon, where Carlitos Alcaraz feels at home and is amazed that everything happened so quickly. May he not show a trace of emotion, and if he does, let a phenomenon massage it. Delicately. As if it were one of his own drop shots.

Jannik is ready, the elbow bandage looks more like a talisman than a genuine need for protection, while Dimitrov, on the other hand, is a ghost who, after taking shape, has become a memory worthy of a dedication. But let's not forget, feats also revolve on the wheel of fortune.

And courage. An Italian, or rather, a non-German, had never conducted in Bayreuth, the temple of Wagnerian music: Arturo Toscanini did it in 1930, breaking down a wall for the love of Wagner, but he would never do it again, defending the freedom they were taking away from us. That day, he conducted with such passion and impetuosity that he snapped his baton in two. The nobler the setting, the more effort it takes to win and the more glory it brings. Sinner plays hard rock, Alcaraz jazz. Jannik is steel, Carlitos silk: "They are the two new birds of prey on the circuit," writes L'Equipe. El Niño's courage knows no bounds, we believed the same was true for the number one, but Paris was an eight-thousander he narrowly missed, and vertigo was to blame. We thought he was immune, and perhaps he had convinced himself. Today, the Centrale Theatre promises to be hot, London is split by the sun: the roof won't close, but it must be breached anyway. Because it's the obstacles you can't see that are the hardest to overcome.