Novak Djokovic package – “It will take weeks or even months”: Djoko, Wimbledon and the Olympics compromised?

Novak Djokovic has drawn a line under Roland-Garros. For a player of his caliber to give up, the situation is serious. Like Rafael Nadal, the Serbian rarely goes down on one knee during the tournament. Because he knows himself better than anyone and because he tolerates pain like no other. On Monday, his fall in the second set against Francisco Cerundolo finally brought him to the ground.

In two stages, first the space of two sets where, unable to run normally, he let points slip away. But not the match. The anti-inflammatories and the adrenaline of the encounter kept him going until the senseless outcome. But the night and the MRI on Tuesday reminded Novak Djokovic of his mortal condition. He suffers from a medial meniscus injury in his right knee. Beyond the Paris tournament, it is the continuation of its season in the short and medium term which is threatened.

However, this injury comes at the most critical time of the year. Wimbledon starts in just over three weeks and the Olympic Games, the ultimate goal of the Serbian who is chasing the last major title that eludes him, in less than two months. “It’s a very serious injury that won’t go away tomorrow.his former coach, Boris Becker, told us. This leaves me speechless. You really need your knees on the grass where you really slip all the time. A tear of the medial meniscus is a serious injury and the question naturally arises whether surgery is necessary.“

His participation in Wimbledon seems really compromised today. “The whole question is whether the lesion had been known for some time, which would be good news, or whether it appeared on Monday.“, tells us Doctor Paul Bizzozero, orthopedic surgeon at Aix hospital and at HumanFab (sport and innovation center of expertise). “It’s been about two weeks since I’ve had slight discomfort in my right knee, if I may say so. But it wasn’t really an injury to worry about. I played several tournaments with“, indicated Djokovic leaving a real mystery surrounding “this embarrassment” who accompanied him.

Now his staff must make a decision. Is it necessary to operate? “It’s the worst time to get hurtworries Becker. Especially such a serious injury. After such an operation (if he needs it), you first have crutches, then you lose muscle. It will be weeks, if not months, before he has 100% confidence in his knee again. This is a very difficult situation for Novak Djokovic.“Victim of a meniscus injury in March 2018, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was, for example, unable to defend his chances two and a half months later at Roland-Garros or even the Beijing Olympics in August. The fault lies with healing longer than expected.

The deadlines can be shortened if, like Paul Pogba in the fall of 2022, he decides not to go to the operating table. “But it’s a huge gamble. If it is a failure, he will have wasted time and Pogba is the perfect examplecontinues Doctor Bizzozero. If he has surgery, Wimbledon is very compromised and the Olympic Games are also off to a bad start. By removing the injured part of the meniscus, he has a better chance of playing in the short term even if he will suffer from osteoarthritis in the long term. But at 37, with a career that will not extend for years yet, he can take this risk and it is, in my opinion, today, the most logical solution.“

This would necessarily jeopardize the chances of seeing Novak Djokovic again in Paris this summer. “In this case, the minimum period for a very high level athlete who benefits from over-medical supervision is two months.he continues. So for the Olympics, it remains very hot even if we cannot predict anything with an athlete of this level.“This fall could not only deprive him of a 25th Grand Slam title but perhaps a little more than that. He who has never done better than bronze at the Olympics (in Beijing in 2008) is aiming for more than all this title that he lacks to crown an almost perfect career It is not yet lost, especially with Djokovic.