Beyond the walls of the Via Sant’Andrea courtyard where I meet Jannik Sinner—a four-time Grand Slam champion and tennis’s world number two—the city’s anticipatory thrum is on the rise. Mascot-branded Sprinters appear in greater density by the hour, and visitors wearing their home country’s flags bounce in their steps as they clash against the Milanese.
Yet Sinner—dressed in baggy black jeans, a pocket chain, and a one-of-a-kind black Nike ACG vest, which can be inflated or deflated based on warming needs—seemed at ease. (US athletes at Milano Cortina have been wearing white jackets of the same construction on the medal stands.) “What I love about Jannik is that he’s not loud, but powerful,” Martin Lotti, Nike’s chief design officer, tells me as we watch Sinner posing for photos. “I feel this extends to all parts of who he is.” The goal of Lotti’s work with athletes like Sinner is to connect the dots between sports, culture, and style. Sinner, from what I could tell, was very much at home in that intersection.
Of course, Sinner is not competing in these Games—but at one point that wouldn’t have been a foregone conclusion. What many may not realize: Sinner won Italy’s junior national championship in giant slalom alpine skiing at the age of eight and was a national title runner-up again at age 11. At 13, he moved over to tennis full-time, but who knows where he’d have gone if he’d stayed with racing instead of switching to rackets.
Honoring his winter-sports roots—and his upbringing in the Dolomites—Sinner is also an ambassador and volunteer for these Olympic Games. Here, he talks to Vogue about what it was like to be a Northern Italian kid growing up on the mountains—and who he’s following on the slopes now.
Vogue: What is your relationship to skiing these days? Do you still get out there?
Jannik Sinner: Yeah, it’s an interesting relationship. When I’m at home in the wintertime, I really love to go. But I was starting to get very, very careful four or five years ago. I had to be sure that nothing happened. [Before that] I think I was not mature enough. I started to realize that injuries can happen really quickly. Of course, though, I look and watch and follow a lot of skiing.
That’s cool. So you still keep up with it?
I do, of course. I really love it; there are some great, great Italian athletes. [But for me,] I am definitely going less and less, just because of the simple fact that you can get hurt and you never know what’s going to happen.
With your skiing history, is there anything that you miss or miss being able to do?
The adrenaline. And to be honest, that’s the only thing I really miss. I would say that skiing has this different sort of pressure, though. You need to perform well even though you don’t really know where you’re standing. In tennis, you have a huge hand, because you always know the score. And you know that, at times, maybe you can play at 80% just to get through. That’s enough for that day. But skiing is not like this at all. You just go, and you have no idea [until it’s done].
I hadn’t thought about that. You’ve got nothing to compare yourself to, and there’s nothing to calibrate against. You just have to go full throttle.
Yes. So you have this pressure, and [for me] this turned into mostly, also, doubts. So I enjoyed the competition part a little bit less. But for sure I miss the adrenaline. I miss going fast.