Tennis star Novak Djokovic said that it was not good for tennis that players were “kept in the dark” about world number one Jannik Sinner’s doping case.
Djokovic said: “It’s not a good image and not a good look for our sport… You don’t want to see that. I believe that in the last 20-plus years that I’ve been playing on the professional tour that we’ve been one of the cleanest sports. I’ll keep believing in that clean sport.”
He added: “I’m just questioning the way the system works, really, and why certain players are not treated the same as other players.”
Although the International Tennis Integrity Agency has been unable to dismiss accusations of unfair treatment, it insists that all doping investigations are handled based on the facts and evidence and not on a player’s name, ranking, or nationality.
Djokovic stated that the “issue is the consistency and the transparency” as the other athletes were clearly uninformed about Jannik Sinner’s doping incident.
“I’m not questioning whether he [Sinner] took the banned substance intentionally or not. I believe in a clean sport, I believe that the player will do everything possible to be fair… I’ve known Jannik since he was very young. He doesn’t strike me as somebody who would do such a thing. But I’ve been really frustrated as (have) most of the other players to see that we’ve been kept in the dark for five months,” he remarked.
Australian Nick Kyrgios also criticized the authorities for what he perceived to be their lenient handling of the Sinner and Swiatek incidents, calling them “disgusting” for the sport.
Source: CNA