World number 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic is likely to be banned from defending his title at the Australian Open in January over his refusal to divulge his vaccine status and assertion that people should have freedom of choice.
The state of Victoria, where the tournament will take place, has announced that unvaccinated players won’t be able to compete, meaning crowds will be deprived of seeing one of the modern legends of the game.
Djokovic has repeatedly refused to reveal if he’s been jabbed and decried the medical apartheid that is being imposed via vaccine passports.
According to the tennis star, “with things being as they are,” he won’t be competing at Melbourne Park, where he won the title last year.
During a podcast earlier this week, Djokovic’s rival Nick Kyrgios said it wasn’t right to force athletes or anyone else to get vaccinated, a position championed by the Serbian.
“I must agree with him that the freedom of choice is essential for everyone, whether it’s me or somebody else,” the 34 year-old told reporters in Turin.
“Doesn’t really matter whether it’s vaccination or anything else in life. You should have the freedom to choose, to decide what you want to do. In this particular case, what you want to put in your body,” he added.
Maybe we should be paying attention to people whose entire careers rely on being in peak health and physical condition.
As we previously highlighted, despite the relentless pressure to get jabbed, a large proportion of top level footballers have refused to do so, prompting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to reverse a policy that would have banned unvaccinated players.
Earlier this month, German newspaper Berliner Zeitung published a report seeking to answer why an “unusually large number of professional and amateur soccer players have collapsed recently.”
