Physiotherapist Giacomo Naldi and athletic trainer Umberto Ferrara were fired by Jannik Sinner at the end of August, after the doping issue had exploded a few days earlier, with related controversy over what had happened and the various ways in which the story had unfolded.
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Jannik had said how important they had been in his career, thanking them, but making their dismissal official: "It was a tough time for me and my staff and it still is. It was a long process, I had to make decisions, with deadlines to respect in this process, which followed timeframes that did not depend on me."
Naldi, who was harshly attacked on social media for his carelessness that could have cost Jannik a disqualification, opened up about those delicate moments experienced by the Italian's team, during the presentation of the Open Food Factory project.
"I'm fine. I'm sorry like everyone else. I can't say anything else, I just hope, sooner or later, I can also tell what happened to give a general picture, as anyone who has read the sentence knows," he said.
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Naldi then talked about his relationship with Jannik, telling an anecdote that occurred following the news of his paternity: "He wrote to me, he was nice like all the staff. For the rest, I received and read things that weren't nice, but it's part of the game."
Following the explosion of the doping case involving the world number 1, Jannik had no choice but to make this decision, to distance himself from what happened. Subsequently, Sinner - awaiting a ruling from the CAS that will presumably not arrive before 2025 - hired Ulises Badio, a new physiotherapist, and Marco Panichi, a new trainer, who have already been accompanying him in tournaments for several weeks.
