The director of 40-A speaks, the magazine that talks about Roland Garros like no other

“We had So Foot for football, Pedal for cycling, Tampon! for rugby: only tennis was missing”. And so, Victor Le Grand and the other guys from So Press, the publishing group that revolutionized the Parisian newsmag market, with its cool and glossy magazines, have decided to launch 40-A, an annual magazine that talks about tennis, but also about many other things. “Tennis is a sport of somewhat crazy and very strange people. And precisely for this reason there are always so many good stories to tell ”, Victor Le Grand, director of 40-A, tells Il Foglio. “Tennis is also an excuse to talk about something else, to explore what goes on in the heads of the players, to describe the person behind the professional, with his madness, his passions, his neuroses”. 40-A’s philosophy is the same as the other So Press magazines, which the president of the publishing group, Franck Annese, summarizes with these words: “We make the magazines we love to read.” 40-A comes out every year on the occasion of Roland Garros, the most important red clay tournament in the world which this year, for its 122nd edition, is without its king: Rafael Nadal, 14 times winner of the French Open. In 2021, for its first cover, 40-A chose Stefanos Tsitsipas, in 2022 the focus was on the four melancholic musketeers of French tennis, Gasquet, Tsonga, Monfils, Simon. “This year we have decided to dedicate the number to Yannick Noah for the 40th anniversary of his victory at Roland Garros”, says Le Grand. “As Mats Wilander, who lost the Roland Garros final to him in 1983, said, Yannick Noah it is ‘bigger than life’: bigger than life”.