Angelo Binaghi pays tribute to Nicola Pietrangeli: "We lose the greatest symbol"
Angelo Binaghi, president of the Italian Tennis and Padel Federation, paid tribute to Nicola Pietrangeli, who passed away this morning at the age of 92, with a long letter, published on the official FITP website. “Today Italian tennis loses its greatest symbol, and I lose a friend – he began -Nicola Pietrangeli was not only a champion: he was the first to teach us what winning really meant, on and off the court. He was the starting point for everything our tennis has become. With him we realized that we too could compete with the world, that dreaming big was no longer a gamble”.
“When people talk about Nicola, they immediately think of records, Davis Cups, titles and triumphs that will forever remain in our history. But the truth is that Nicola was so much more – added the Federtennis number one -He was a way of being. With his cutting irony, his free spirit, his inexhaustible will to live and joke, he managed to make tennis something human, something true, something deeply Italian. In my office there is a picture I cherish: me as a child, ball boy in a Davis Cup match in Cagliari, and in front of me just him, Nicola Pietrangeli. Every time I look at it, I seem to go back to that day. And I realize that, after all, everything for me began there”.
“For me, Nicola was not only the greatest player in our history (two-time champion at Roland Garros in 1959 and 1960, ed.). He was tennis, in the deepest sense of the word – Binaghi later stressed -I owe him a lot, as a man and as a president. Not only for what he did for the Federation and for all of us, but for the way he did it: with style, with courage, with that irreverence of his that was the sign of true champions. In his own way, Nicola never changed: direct, sincere, incapable of being trivial. Even when he provoked, he did so with an intelligence that stemmed from a deep love for our sport”.
“Today we like to think that he has joined Lea in heaven (who passed away more than a year ago at the age of 89, ed.), and that together they are already playing an extraordinary mixed doubles, having fun as only they knew how to do. Two icons of Italian tennis, inseparable even up there. But for those of us who remain, it is a very hard blow. In the space of little more than a year we have lost two pieces of our soul. Two people who wrote our history and who will continue to inspire us, every day, on and off the court. Thank you, Nicola. For all you have given us, and for all you will continue to represent for Italian tennis” concluded the FITP president.
