Jannick Sinner’s shift from the slopes to the court follows a storied tradition. Meet the athletes who’ve mastered more than one arena.
These days, most champions have been hard at it from an early age, but a change of direction can still pay off. Growing up in northern Italy’s mountainous South Tirol, Jannik Sinner rated tennis third of his favourite sports, behind skiing and football. As a junior slalom racer based out of the Dolomites 3 Zinnen ski area, he was Italy’s number one for his year group, but found himself increasingly disadvantaged by a physique he describes as skinny, while his rivals put on beef. So he switched to tennis, although it took him away from home and snow at the difficult age of 13.
Sinner has no reason to regret the decision, and it gives lazy commentators a go-to remark every time he changes direction on a dime and smacks an inch-perfect winner down the line. Ski racer’s legs to the rescue again, they say knowingly. The man himself will only admit that skiing may have helped his mental attitude because, as he explains, “If you make one mistake in ski racing, you lose”.
Novak Djokovic, who also spent his childhood winters on skis, is more inclined to give credence to the ski-racer’s-legs theory. Novak’s career trajectory required no change of direction, because the furry ball and strung racket were always his preferred weapons. In his case, the problem was funding. With the words You have a golden boy, Djokovic’s local tennis coach told his ski-instructor father Srdjan to beg, borrow or steal – whatever it took – to send Novak to the Niki Pilic Tennis Academy in Munich. Extortionate loans were amply repaid.
Skiing from an early age can open doors to more than high-level tennis. Chasing speed on the mountain is an obvious segue to putting the hammer down on the race track, too.
“I’ve always been crazy about motorsport,” says Clara Stiebleichinger, the 20-year-old ski racer from the Austrian mountain village of Seefeld who spent last summer making a name for herself on the Indian F4 scene. That being so, it was an easy decision to put a budding ski career in the back seat when the chance to spend a year studying in Paris came up, and shift her competitive drive to the wheel of a sports car. “There are no ski resorts in Paris,” she explains helpfully.
Aware of her passion, Clara’s parents gave her a week-long F4 driving ‘experience’ in France for her 18th birthday. When she knocked on the door of Team Feed Racing to enquire about job opportunities, they said: Why not become a driver? Clara jumped at it and here she is now, cornering on the edge and slipstreaming with the best of them on the subcontinent, men and women battling it out in the fast lane.
She has no plans to go back to racing gates. “I feel excitement and joy getting into the car,” she says. “Motor racing gives me an adrenaline kick that skiing doesn’t anymore. From now on skiing is for fun with my family and friends.”
Once acquired, the craving for speed will not be denied. Some ski racers take up bobsleigh in retirement, others find the necessary buzz in speed skiing. Finland’s Häkä Häkkinen clocked 217kph at the age of 63.
Nor is Clara’s move into motorsport without precedent. From skiing at St Moritz in the 1948 Olympics, Britain’s Ian Appleyard went on to sporting immortality as a rally driver, dominating the Coupe des Alpes in his iconic Jaguar XK120. Divina Galica was wondering what to do with the rest of her life after a downhill racing career that took her to World Cup podiums and three Olympics for Britain from 1964 to 1972, when a chance invitation to take part in a celebrity race put her in the driving seat of a fast car. She did not look back, scaling the heights of Formula 1 as far as Grand Prix selection, although never as far as the grid. After a second ski career and a fourth Olympics as a speed skier in 1992 she returned to motorsport and was last heard of coaching racers at the Bertil Roos Racing School in Florida, in her eighties. Clara could do worse than look her up.
Those blessed with all the attributes, physical and mental, required to reach the top in sport, face difficult choices. In a more leisured age, the supremely gifted sporting all-rounder could keep all their balls in the air, so to speak, swapping skis and skates for tennis shoes and golf spikes when the clocks go forward. For all-round GOAT status, look no further than 16-year-old Norwegian tennis champion Laila Schou Nilsen. When she found out at short notice that there were to be no women’s medals for her favourite winter sport, speed skating, at the upcoming 1936 Winter Olympics, she took up alpine skiing after Christmas, and won the Olympic Downhill in February.
World domination is some way off for Clara Stiebleichinger. “My first big goal is to get to Formula 1 Academy,” she says. “It would be a big opportunity to show my potential and to get visibility from other teams and other series. Afterwards I could see myself switching to GT cars, where there are more opportunities and another great new experience.” Onwards and upwards. Good luck Clara, the world is your racetrack. Godspeed.
By Adam Ruck
