Mika Brunold won, but that was not what people talked about most that Sunday in Tulln, Austria.
The 21-year-old Swiss tennis player defeated his Brazilian rival João Lucas Reis da Silva 6-4 and 6-3 in the Challenger final, and when the match ended, he did something no one expected: he publicly thanked him for giving him the courage to come out. A year earlier, in December 2025, Brunold had made his homosexuality public. Before him, Reis da Silva had already done so, becoming the first active professional tennis player to come out as gay.
Today, they are the only two players on the men’s tour who have taken that step, and this Sunday they made history in a way tennis had never seen before: the first professional final contested between two openly gay men. Brunold, who was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, won. But what remained was his gesture toward the man who, without knowing it, taught him not to be afraid.