Jannik Sinner – tennis player

The astonishingly fast rise of a top Italian sportsman

Jannik Sinner has enjoyed a rapid
rise to the top of the ATP rankings

Jannik Sinner, who has become the highest ranked Italian tennis singles player in history, was born on this day in 2001 in Innichen, also known as San Candido, in northern Italy.

Sinner is currently ranked as the World No 1 in Singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), having won a Grand Slam title at the 2024 Australian Open. He also led the Italian team to victory in the Davis Cup competition in 2023, the first time Italy had won the Davis Cup since 1976.

He grew up in Sexten - Sesto in Italian - in the Dolomites, where his father worked as a chef and his mother as a waitress in a ski lodge, in a part of the predominantly German-speaking South Tyrol province. Sinner was a competitive skier between the ages of seven and 12.

But he also had a talent for tennis and decided to focus on that sport exclusively from the age of 13. He went to train with the Italian coach Riccardo Piatti in Bordighera in Liguria, where he quickly improved his Italian.

Sinner had limited success as a junior, but he began playing on the ITF Men’s Tour in 2018.  Because of his low ranking he could compete in Challenger events only if he was given wild cards, but in 2019 he won his first ATP Challenger event in Bergamo at the age of 17 and a half.

He was the first person born in 2001 to reach a Challenger final and the youngest Italian to win a Challenger final in history.

Sinner holds up the trophy after winning the
2024 Australian Open, his first Grand Slam

Sinner entered his first ATP tournament as a lucky loser at the Hungarian Open in 2019. His first ATP Masters victory came at the Italian Open against Steve Johnson and he broke into the top 200 with his next ATP win at the Croatia Open.

He won a second ATP Challenger title in Lexington, becoming one of just 11 players aged 17 to win multiple Challenger titles.

Later that year he qualified for his first Grand Slam main draw at the US Open but lost his debut match to Stan Wawrinka.

Sinner qualified for the 2019 NextGen ATP finals and, despite being the lowest seed, he beat the top seed, Alex de Minaur, to win the title.

He reached the second round of the Australian Open and the third round of the Rome Masters in 2020. He became the youngest quarter finalist at the French Open, since Novak Djokovic in 2006, and he finished 2020 as the world No 37.

The following year, he reached his first ATP Masters final at the Miami Open, finishing runner up in the tournament to Hubert Hurkacz.

Sinner won his first ATP title in Washington, and entered the top 15 for the first time in August 2021. He reached the fourth round of the US Open that year before losing to Alexander Zverev.

Jannik Sinner is often cheered on by a group of
supporters who call themselves the 'Carota Boys'

After reaching the semi-finals of the Vienna Open later that year, he became the first male player born after 2000 to get into the top 10. Also in 2021, he beat big-serving giant John Isner 6-2, 6-0 in a Davis Cup match against the United States, which made him only the second player in Isner's career to "bagel" the American, winning a set without conceding a single game.

Sinner ended the year by going ahead of his fellow countryman Matteo Berretini in the rankings.

In 2023, he reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon, before losing to Djokovic in straight sets, but beat the then World No 1 and defending champion Djokovic at the 2024 Australian Open, becoming the first Italian man to reach the final at this event.  

He was cheered on in Melbourne by group of fans known as the 'Carota Boys', who watch his matches dressed in carrot costumes - inspired partly by his red hair and partly by his practice earlier in his career of munching a raw carrot on court during changeovers.

Sinner became World No 1 in June this year and won the Halle Open as the top player in the world. At Wimbledon, he lost to Daniil Medvedev in a five-set quarter-final after having a medical timeout because of illness. Sadly, he was unable to represent Italy at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris because he had tonsillitis.

Jannik Sinner currently lives in Monte Carlo in Monaco. To this date he has won 14 singles titles on the ATP Tour.

Bolzano's duomo, the Cattedrale Maria Himmelfahrt,
was consecrated in 1180 and built in Romanesque style

Travel tip:

The South Tyrol area of what is now northern Italy is also known as Südtirol in Germany and Alto Adige in Italian. Together with the autonomous province of Trento, South Tyrol forms the region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It has a population of just over half a million people, of whom around 63 per cent speak German as their first language, although the provincial capital, Bolzano, has an Italian-speaking majority. Sinner's home village of Innichen/San Candido and the neighbouring Sexten/Sesto are slightly more than 100km (62 miles) east of Bolzano by road and just a few kilometres from the border with Austria. Almost half the region's population live in Bolzano and the surrounding areas. One of the largest urban areas in the Alpine region, it has a mediaeval city centre famous for its wooden market stalls, selling among other things Alpine cheeses, hams and bread. Places of interest include the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, the imposing 13th-century Mareccio Castle, and the Duomo di Bolzano with its Romanesque and Gothic architecture. 

The resort town of Bordighera in Liguria was the
subject of a landscape painting by Monet in 1884

Travel tip:

Bordighera, where Jannik Sinner moved at the age of 13 to further his ambitions in tennis, is a small, picturesque town on Italy’s Riviera, just 20km (12 miles) from Italy’s western border with France. It is famous for its flower industry and was a popular holiday destination for the English during Queen Victoria’s reign. Being situated where the Maritime Alps meet the sea, it enjoys the benefit of a climate that invariably produces mild winters. It was the first town in Europe to grow date palms. Its seafront road, the Lungomare Argentina - named in honour of a visit to the town by Evita Peron in 1947 - is 2.3km (1.4 miles) long and is said to be the longest promenade on the Italian Riviera. Queen Margherita of Savoy - wife of Umberto I - had a winter palace, Villa Margherita, in the town.  Tourism remains a huge part of Bordighera's economy but it tends to be less crowded and less expensive than some of the higher-profile Riviera resorts.

Also on this day:

1650: The birth of globe maker Vincenzo Coronelli

2005: The death of cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli

2006: The death of renowned art restorer Umberto Baldini

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Karl Zuegg - jam and juice maker

Businessman turned family farm into international company

Karl Zuegg

Karl Zuegg, the businessman who turned his family's fruit-farming expertise into one of Italy's major producers of jams and juices, was born on this day in 1915 in Lana, a town in what is now the autonomous province of Bolzano in Trentino-Alto Adige.

His grandparents, Maria and Ernst August Zuech - they changed their name to Zuegg in 1903 - had been cultivating fruit on their farm since 1860, when Lana was part of South Tyrol in what was then Austria-Hungary.  They traded at local markets and began exporting.

Zuegg and the company's other major brand names, Skipper and Fruttaviva, are among the most recognisable in the fruit products market in Italy and it is largely through Karl's hard work and enterprise.

He was managing director of the company from 1940 to 1986, during which time Zuegg became the first drinks manufacturer in Italy to make use of the ground-breaking Tetrapak packaging invented in Sweden, which allowed drinks to be sold in lightweight cardboard cartons rather than traditional glass bottles.

The family business had begun to experiment with jams in 1917 when austerity measures in Italy were biting hard and there was a need to preserve food.  Rather than throw away overripe apples, the family turned them into jam.

The Zuegg logo is well known in Italian grocery stores

Their methods were successful with other fruits too and Zuegg jams went into mass production in 1923, achieving immediate success.

But it was not until Karl joined the board of the company in 1937 that the business began to expand on a large scale.

Under Karl's leadership, the Zuegg brand grew, with bigger production facilities and innovative technology. The company developed new products such as the Fruttino snack bar, a solid stick of quince jam enriched with vitamins that became a staple of children's school lunches throughout Italy.

The first Zuegg fruit juices arrived in 1954, with bottles of pear, peach and apricot juice soon becoming familiar items on the shelves of Italian grocery stores.

Fruit cultivation is an important part of Lana's economy

In the early 1960s, Zuegg intoduced the Fruttaviva jams, the first to be produced without the use of preservatives and dyes, and two years later, after opening a new plant in Verona - now the company's headquarters - became a supplier of fruit products for use in yogurt, pastries and ice cream.

It was in 1979, as Karl continually looked for innovations that would help grow the business further, that the company signed a deal for the Swedish company Tetrapak to supply its revolutionary cartons for Zuegg products.

Tetrapak's unique method, combining paper, polyethylene and aluminium, produced a lightweight packaging that not only kept fluids from leaking outwards. It also prevented bacteria from entering the product and, through the aluminium layer, protected the contents from deteriorating through exposure to light.

Selling drinks in these so-called 'briks' was a novelty in Italy and Karl Zuegg's vision made his company the market leader. Today, of course, such packaging is standard.

The original Zuegg headquarters in Lana

On the back of this success, Zuegg was able to open another Italian production plant at Luogosano, in the province of Avellino in Campania, in 1985.  Three years later, the Skipper line, selling 100 per cent pure fruit juices, was launched.

Today, Zuegg is an international company with six plants - two in Italy, two in Germany, one in France and one in Russia - and employs more than 500 staff.

As part of its campaign to promote healthy living, the company has a long history of sponsorship in sport, which has seen it provide financial backing for competitors in skiing and snowboarding, beach volleyball, basketball and tennis, and for two seasons promoted the brand as a main sponsor of Internazionale football club.

Karl Zuegg, who was made Cavaliere del Lavoro by the Italian government in recognition of his services to industry, died in 2005 in Lana, his home town, at the age of 91.  He is buried at the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Lana di Sotto.

Travel tip:

Lana is a small town and resort in the Adige valley in north-eastern Italy midway between Bolzano and Merano in the area of the Trentino-Alto Adige region also known as South Tyrol. The German influence on the area is so dominant that more than 90 per cent of the town's 12,000 residents speak German as their first language, and less than eight per cent Italian. It is popular with hikers and cyclists in the summer months, with a network of well defined cycle paths.  Lana is also home to the South Tyrol Museum of Fruit, which details the history of fruit cultivation in the area.

Hotels in Lana from Hotels.com

The Roman Porta Borsari in Verona is almost 2,000 years old 

Travel tip:

Verona is famous for the Arena, the Roman amphitheatre that stages open air concerts, and for Casa Giulietta, the house with the balcony said to be the one that featured in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  But there is more to the city's attractions.  In addition to the Arena, Verona is said to have more Roman ruins than any other Italian city and many are part of the everyday fabric of the city, including the Porta Borsari, with its two large arches and numerous smaller arches above, dating back to the 1st century, which straddles the entrance to Corso Porta Borsari, one of the city's main shopping streets.  There are many squares, including the charming Piazza dei Signori, which is surrounded by several fine buildings, including the Palazzo del Comune, the Palazzo Domus Nova and the Loggia del Consiglio.

More reading:

How Michele Ferrero's hazelnut spread became a worldwide phenomenon

Francesco Cirio and the canning revolution

A hotel empire that started with a single London coffee bar

Also on this day:

1940: The birth of F1 motor racing champion Mario Andretti

1942: The birth of record-breaking goalkeeper Dino Zoff

(Picture credits: Tractor in orchard by böhringer friedrich; Porta Borsari by Didier Descouens via Wikimedia Commons; Zuegg pictures from Zuegg company website)


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