The 24-time Grand Slam winner agreed with Australian Nick Kyrgios, who said on Saturday that the current integrity in their sport was a “horror”.
The two players were speaking about the cases of anti-doping rule violations which concerned the world number ones, the Italian Jannik Sinner and the Polish Iga Swiatek, during the year 2024.
Twice in March 2024, minute traces of clostebol (steroid) were found in Sinner’s body, who was briefly suspended each time. But the Italian pleaded ignorance and above all contamination, and was completely cleared by the International Agency for Integrity in Tennis (Itia) before the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed.
A few months after Sinner, the Polish Iga Swiatek, current No.2, was also suspended for a month for doping after the discovery in August of trimetazidine in her body. Here too, Itia accepted the contamination excuse.
According to Djokovic, 37, who will play doubles with Kyrgios at the Brisbane tournament this week, top players like Sinner and Swiatek are treated differently from those who occupy a lower position in the ATP and WTA rankings.
“I think Nick has valid points regarding transparency and inconsistency of protocols and case-by-case comparisons,” the Serbian stressed.
“We have players who have been waiting for more than a year for their cases to be resolved,” he recalled.
If Djokovic said he believed Sinner when he assured that he had tested positive for the steroid clostebol following contamination by his physiotherapist, he claimed to have “been very frustrated, like most of the other players, to have been required in ignorance for five months,” he said.
“(Sinner) received the news (of the positive tests) in April and the announcement wasn’t made until August, right before the US Open. The ATP hasn’t really spoken in depth about why they kept this matter away from the public,” he lamented.
“Then we had the case of (Simona) Halep and that of Swiatek on the WTA circuit and it is not a good image for our sport,” he explained, referring to the case of the Romanian, former world No.1, initially suspended for four years in 2022 for a positive test and an irregularity in her biological passport, sanction reduced to nine months in March 2024.
“I just question how the system works,” Djokovic added. “Why are some players not treated the same as others? “Maybe there are filing reasons behind it, or maybe others have more financial backing behind them or stronger legal teams.”
Par Le360 (with AFP)
12/29/2024 at 8:52 a.m.
