Sinner as Hector, Alcaraz as Achilles. A Homeric challenge.

Now that Sinner , by beating the defending champion Alcaraz , has dispelled the eternal taboo of Italian sport (until yesterday no Italian tennis player had won Wimbledon ), well, I'd like to try to avoid the cliché, the perennial reference to the legendary rivalry between Federer and Nadal, with the addition of Djoko and blah blah blah. And I'm not even willing to disturb the ghosts of Coppi and Bartali , Senna and Prost , Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier . For goodness sake, it's all fine: but here, with Sinner and Alcaraz, we're going beyond that.

We're in Homer , and I'm not exaggerating. We're in the painfully inevitable narrative of the opposition between Hector and Achilles in the pages of the Iliad . Because even then, in the Greece of legends, there could be no room for two kings, two rulers, two heroes. Now, as a much better gentleman than I wrote, tell me, who among us didn't root for Hector at school, even knowing he'd ultimately lose to the son of Peleus, protected by the gods? And every time we closed the book, prisoners of an incurable melancholy.

Yesterday at Wimbledon, however, no. Alcaraz was Achilles for a series of easily explainable reasons. He had triumphed in the last two editions of the tournament. He had beaten Sinner in their most recent direct clashes. Above all, the Spaniard had taken a piece of the Italian's heart in Paris, erasing three match points and then prevailing at the height of an emotional ordeal worthy of a Hollywood screenplay. But yesterday, as I was saying, no. This time Ettore prevailed. Not that the possibility was ruled out by the predictions; Jannik is a champion and had already abundantly demonstrated it. But it came from the precedents I described.

This young man is sustained by an inner strength truly worthy of Homer's pen. He had been crushed by a truck. He rose again. He did what Fate denied Achilles' adversary.

Luckily for us, in the new millennium Ettore is Italian. And his name is Jannik Sinner .