Novak Djokovic will reappear this Monday after several months away from the courts. He will do so at the Brisbane tournament, and first at the doubles table, where he will be joined by Nick Kyrgios (in singles it starts on Tuesday).
The champion of 24 Grand Slam titles and Australia’s ‘enfant terrible’ maintain good harmony off the court, where they agree on issues such as criticizing the lack of transparency regarding doping suspensions in tennis.
The Serb agreed with Kyrgios, who on Saturday said the current integrity of his sport is a “horror.”
“I think Nick has valid points about transparency and inconsistency of protocols and case-by-case comparisons. We have players waiting more than a year for their case to be resolved,” he lamented at a press conference.
Both players refer to cases of anti-doping rule violations in which they were involved. players of the caliber of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatekin 2024.
On two occasions, in March 2024, Small traces of the steroid clostebol were found on Sinner’s body, and he was briefly suspended both times.. But the Italian claimed ignorance and, above all, contamination, and was fully exonerated by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (Itia) before the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) filed an appeal.
A few months after the Sinner, Swiatek, currently number 2, was also suspended for a month for doping after trimetazidine was detected in his system in August. Also in this case, Itia accepted the cause of the contamination.
According to Djokovic, high-level players like Sinner and Swiatek are treated differently to those lower in the ATP and WTA rankings.
Although Djokovic said he believed Sinner when he said he tested positive for the steroid clostebol following contamination from his physiotherapist, He said he was “very frustrated, like most other players, at being in the dark for five months.”
“(Sinner) received the news (of the positive) in April and the announcement was not made until August, before the US Open. The ATP hasn’t really talked in depth about why they’re keeping it out of the public eye.” he whined.
“Then we had the case of (Simona) Halep and Swiatek on the WTA Tour and it’s not a good image for our sport“, he explained, referring to the case of the Romanian, former world number 1, initially suspended for four years in 2022 due to a positive test and an irregularity in his biological passport, a punishment that was reduced to nine months in March 2024 .
“I wonder how the system works. Why don’t some players get the same treatment as others? Maybe there are classification reasons behind it, or maybe others have more financial support or stronger legal teams,” concluded the Serbian.
Source: La Verdad
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