The absurd death of Tobias Tappeiner, Sinner's former rival on the wrong side of the highway
The 24-year-old tennis talent from Alto Adige crashed into a car after taking the A22 in the opposite direction. The accident near Bolzano. The prosecutor's office: no autopsy
Tobias Tappeiner with Jannik Sinner in 2022
Bolzano, 16 June 2025 – He took theBrenner motorway in the wrong direction crashing into another car while going to the sea. He lost his life like this, yesterday at dawn, Tobias Tappeiner, 24 years old, a tennis talent from South Tyrol. Nobody can understand the fatal error that caused theaccident: Tobias knew the Bolzano Sud junction well, from which he took the A22.
Tappeiner was an instructor at the tennis school of the club in via Martin Knoller in Bolzano, played in the championship of series B1 TC Bolzano. He lived in San Paolo Eppan, a couple of hours drive from San Candido, a town of Jannik Sinner. And it was precisely Sinner's opponent, before the world number one took off on the international circuits.
As he tells South Tyrol, Tappeiner had faced Sinner several times. In the Under 12 days, he had even beaten him. We are talking about a tournament in Bressanone way back in 2014: 7-6 and 6-3 the result in favor of Tobias. As teenagers, Tobias and Jannik had also been on the road together, for the Bolzano team. Tappeiner then met Sinner again in 2022: the two appear in a photo together on the 24-year-old's Instagram page, with the hashtag #forzajannik.
Here is an old photo showing Tappeiner with Sinner (continued below)
Today, the 24-year-old is remembered Stefan Laimer, the sporting director of Tc Bolzano, interviewed by South Tyrol: “Smiling, kind, with a quick sense of irony. I remember Tobi like this. On the pitch, however, he transformed: he was a lion. He never gave up a ball. To beat him, you had to have something more, otherwise in the end he managed to prevail with his grit”.
Yesterday morning Tappeiner inexplicably took theA22 of Brenner in the opposite direction and not far from the junction he collided with the van of a South Tyrolean family from Varna who was going to the seaside. It was 5.15. No examination will be carried out on his body autopsy. It was decided there Bolzano Prosecutor's Office based on the principle that with the death of the offender the investigation is extinguished. No also to toxicology tests.
