Jannik Sinner stepped up to the microphone at the Wimbledon Champions’ Dinner and asked the room to go easy on him.
“Don’t ask me hard questions, I’m tipsy,” he told the guests, before delivering a piece of news that had nothing to do with tennis.
He has failed his motorcycle licence exam for the fourth time.
“I’ve failed it four times. Before coming here, I failed once again,” he told the room at the Raffles hotel on Sunday evening, hours after beating Alexander Zverev in the final.
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“What more can I say? I don’t know. Maybe next year, you’ll ask me the same question again.”
The Italian version, reported by SportMediaset, added the punchline:
“Prima di partire per Londra sono stato bocciato all’esame per il patentino della moto. È la quarta volta, forse è meglio se gioco a tennis.”
Roughly: before flying to London I flunked the bike test again, the fourth time. Maybe I’m better off sticking to tennis.
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The champion without a bike licence
Sinner already gets around Monaco on a Vespa, which local rules let him ride on his category B car licence as long as the 125cc scooter is capped at 11kW.
The full motorcycle permit that would let him move up to something bigger has now defeated him on four separate visits to the examiners.
The confession landed on the same evening the 24-year-old collected his second consecutive Wimbledon title, seeing off Zverev 6-7(7-9), 7-6(7-2), 6-3, 6-4 on Centre Court.
Dance floor with Noskova
The evening’s traditional winners’ dance saw Sinner take to the floor with women’s champion Linda Noskova, the 21-year-old Czech who beat compatriot Karolína Muchová in Saturday’s final, to Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”
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Two Wimbledon trophies. Still no bike licence.
