Semifinals in Paris without Sinner, Senegal opens first Youth Games in Africa

The Rolex Paris Masters, the ninth and last ATP Masters 1000 tournament of the season, scheduled from October 31 to November 8, has reached the semifinals without its defending champion: Jannik Sinner is in fact absent from the tournament, sidelined by an injury. His absence inevitably changes the draw compared to the previous edition, leaving the field open to a different group of semifinalists from the one that decided the title a year earlier.

In the semifinals, Daniil Medvedev faced Carlos Alcaraz on one side, while Alexander Zverev faced Alex de Minaur on the other. Being the last Masters 1000 of the season, the Paris tournament represents for the players involved the last chance before the close of the competitive year to compete at the circuit’s highest level, outside of the season-ending tournaments reserved for the top eight in the ranking.

Several thousand kilometers away, another sporting competition opened with particular historic significance. On Saturday, October 31, Senegal officially launched the fourth edition of the Youth Olympic Games, the first time the event has been held on the African continent. The news currently comes from a single source (AllAfrica, francophone African press review); no independent confirmation is currently available.

The opening of the Games in Dakar marks a symbolic milestone for the youth olympic movement, which for the first time takes its event outside the continents that had hosted it until now. The Paris tournament and the opening of the Senegalese Games, while belonging to different disciplines and categories, share the same day on the international sporting calendar: on one side the end of a professional tennis season, on the other the beginning of an event conceived for new generations of athletes.