As soon as he steps foot into the Melbourne conference room, Novak Djokovic is reminded that it has been 20 years since his first appearance at the Australian Open. And he, 37 years under his belt, one more year ahead, specifies: “The place where I have had the most success.” There are 10 titles, which would be 11 if the Serbian, summoned in the first round of the tournament with the anonymous Nishesh Basavareddy (133rd in the world), managed to triumph on the 26th, the date of the next outcome. There is interest from abroad to see how this attractive link with Andy Murray, his new tutor, is working, or to decipher whether the 25th gold will arrive this time, with which he would break the technical tie with the Australian Margaret Court at the historical top of his sport. The present, however, offers an unexpected twist: Australia and him, heaven and hell. An extreme bond.
There is no male tennis player more decorated than him in the major from the antipodes, in the same way that no one has starred in a more notorious episode than the one that happened in 2022, when he wanted to play in the tournament and ended up arrested, first, and then deported. In a juicy interview given to the magazine GQwhich has offered a few glimpses of the content in its digital edition, Djokovic relives those difficult days for him and slips that he was a “political” victim for not having wanted to be vaccinated against covid, as required by local authorities when accessing the state of Victoria. “For being a public threat.” “For being a hero.” The athlete remembers some details of the arrest and how the police followed him by helicopter when they temporarily returned his visa, before being expelled from the country: “I was like a fugitive.”
Nole expresses that he maintains the same position as then — “I am not pro-vaccines. I am not anti-vaccine. I am in favor of the freedom to choose what is right for you and for your body”—and regrets that after that episode, they proclaimed him “the world’s number one villain.” Likewise, the tennis player says that upon returning to Europe to join his family, settled in Marbella, he had to rectify the course of his plane “because in Spain” probably “the same thing as in Australia” was going to happen to him, and that when he landed in His homeland began to feel bad. “I had some health problems. And I realized that in that hotel in Melbourne [donde permaneció arrestado a la espera de que se resolviera el caso] “They gave me food that had poisoned me.” “I discovered certain things when I returned to Serbia. I never told anyone publicly, but I discovered that I had a very high level of metal. Heavy metal. Of lead and mercury.”
In the text, filled with headlines and revealing anecdotes, the 24-time major champion delves into his origins and the complexity of his region, as well as the future of his sport and the relationship he had with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, both of whom men against whom he battled to unsuspected limits to occupy the historic throne of tennis. It is known that the bond between him and the other two giants has been dotted with acrimony and many disagreements.
How to withdraw
“The rivalry with them has given me strength like nothing else has throughout my career. That’s when it comes to tennis,” he points out in the interview. “And privately, if I’m honest, there are ups and downs. I always try to be respectful and kind to them off the court. But at first I didn’t have that acceptance, because I went out on the court saying and showing that I had confidence in myself and that I wanted to win. And I don’t think either of them liked that at first. Especially since most of the players went out to play against them, not to win. And maybe they distanced themselves a little more from me because of that confident posture. And that’s fine. I accepted it as is. I understood the message, which was: we are rivals and nothing more,” adds Nole, who officially resides in Monte Carlo and alternates stays in the Principality with temporary stays on the Costa del Sol and Belgrade.
For now, Djokovic remains confident in achieving more success on the court — “if I am still physically capable and I feel like I can beat the best players in the world in Grand Slams, why would I stop?” — but at the same time he admits who is already thinking about how to retire. “Yes, the how, not the when,” he clarifies. In any case, he would like to have a space to sit down and talk with Nadal and Federer, and thus resolve some issues. “I would like to have a drink or two with them and talk openly about the things that bother them about me,” he transmits; “or vice versa, whatever. Let’s say it all. And I think I would love to learn from them and understand what they thought, how they handled certain situations on the court, how they handled the pressure of the world when they were at the top. And I have my observations too, because I observed them the same way they observed me over the years.”
Now focused on the competition and the intensity of the next two weeks, which could bring a volcanic cross between him and Carlos Alcaraz in the quarterfinals, he asks reporters not to focus on the alleged poisoning: “I did that interview [con GQ] many months ago. I would appreciate not going into more details as I would like to focus on tennis and why I am here. If you want to see what I said and get more information, I think you can read the article in print in February.”
