The story of Novak Djokovic’s positive Covid test in December grows more bizarre by the day. You might think “why is this even important in the grand scheme of things?” Let me explain. The Australian Open had a vaccine mandate for tennis players coming into the country. Only the AO handed out some “medical exemptions” to a few players, and those exemptions were not cleared by the local Victorian government, nor the federal government of Australia. The feds did not and do not honor the AO scheme that a Covid-positive test in the previous six months is enough to get a medical exemption from being vaccinated. Djokovic clung to the idea that if he had Covid recently, he could enter Oz without being vaccinated.
Part of Novak’s visa application was that he tested positive for Covid on December 16th. On that same day, he was in Belgrade with dozens of kids at the tennis club he owns. He was maskless and interacting with children and their parents for hours. Then the next day, he did a photoshoot and interview with L’Equipe. He was maskless for the shoot, but apparently he did wear a mask for the in-person interview. He did not tell anyone about his Covid-positive status on the 16th or 17th. He did not announce anything in the days afterwards either. There were conversations for the past week about when Novak learned he was “Covid positive” and whether he somehow faked his test. It’s bad either way – either Novak was knowingly Covid-positive and maskless around many people, or he faked a Covid test to get a visa. Well, Novak released a statement and here we go:
There is a grotesque humor to this – he’s like “I need to clarify some misinformation” and his clarification is that all of the reporting is true, he was Covid-positive around dozens of children and adults and he didn’t tell any of them about his Covid status. He’s saying that he attended the event at his tennis club on the 17th AFTER he took a bunch of Covid tests but BEFORE he got a positive result. And he admits that he did the whole photoshoot and interview with L’Equipe knowing he was positive and NOT TELLING ANYONE.
The Serbian prime minister has asked Djokovic to explain why he breached the country’s quarantine rules for Covid-positive people. Oh, and did I mention that Der Spiegel is doing exclusive coverage of the shenanigans with Novak’s PCR testing? Apparently, Serbia has a central test result registry and people who take tests get a QR code. There are… um, some issues with Novak’s code. Journalists examining the code got different results depending on when they looked it up, and Novak’s test might have been negative at some point, and then it was changed to positive. And the dates don’t match up with Novak’s story either.
Y’all – now I kind of think Novak really will get deported from Australia?! Reportedly, Aussie authorities have had an open investigation into all things Djoker since they detained him last week. They’re set to announce their decision tomorrow (in Oz), which would be this evening here, EST.
Photos courtesy of Instagram, L’Equipe, Backgrid and Avalon Red.
Good. They should deport him. What a tool.
Yes to that -kick his butt out! If he does get to stay, I hope he loses
Champion athlete acting like an a$$hole. Novaxx Djocovid is cancelled to me.
Yes, an true douche bag to the end. He also didn’t take ANY responsibility for his lack of publicly having tested positive to those that attended his prior events, or to the journalist.
Either way, he’s also lying his ass off as well! May AUS kick his ass all the way to the curb of the airport.
Those in Serbia should also apologize to AUS officials as well. Their behaviour was unacceptable and certainly not that of a country having their player being called out for his deception! That includes his equally POS Dad too!
@ HEATHER I hope he get deported and banned. Knowingly exposing children is truly sick.
yeah, it’s the right thing to do, regardless of how you feel about him personally. if he was, in fact, positive, dude exposed SO MANY PEOPLE, including kids, to the virus. and who knows how many people THEY spread it to, including elderly or immunocompromised people.
the other option, which is that he faked the positive results, is no bueno either; trying to get around the rules by lying?
then you have the travel issue. yes, throw “the help” under the bus, when it’s much more likely you TOLD that person to check that box deliberately. not sure it’s mentioned but lying to Aus immigration officials on a visa application can get you a YEAR in prison. and breaking covid rules in Serbia can get you THREE years.
I hope he gets booted, and I hope Lacoste drops his lying, cheating azz.
His statement on when he found out he was positive contradicts that of his lawyers’ and his visa submission timeline. Occam’s razor answer is he faked the earlier positive on the 16th after the fact to give Tennis Australia cover for granting him the exemption. The Der Spiegel investigation adds weight to this likely scenario.
Today Boris and Novaxx are clarifying that Covid rules apply to us but not them.
This entitled smug-a** thought he could pass above any law and the result is he is even annoying his own country’s PM who stand up for him in the first place. It is a lose-lose situation for this idi*t, even if he plays the AO, his image is stained for the rest of his career. Hope his sponsors start to drop him (Lacoste I am looking at you)
I am in total schadenfreude mode.
The entitlement coming off him is disgusting. Get the shot like the rest of us FFS.
Yup!!! And I hope the families of the children SUE him for placing their children at risk. I am certain that any attorney would take up a group of parents. He needs to be held accountable, for ALL of his smug lies!
If he was a woman tennis player he’d already be fined and lose his sponsors.
Like- Naomi Osaka doesn’t want to do a press conference for her mental health and gets in trouble for it- this Jack-a&$ lied and broke the rules for entering a country by LYING and possibly faking a test result. Not to mention being around crowds of children when he’s covid positive. Yes he may get deported from Australia- but I bet you that’s it.
He won’t get fines. He won’t get dropped.
Hopefully at least he won’t be allowed back in Australia.
Novax Jokervic…. he’s so misunderstood! 🤣
I don’t understand why the Australian govt didn’t just re-cancel his visa after the hearing as they said they would. Do they think this will die down and he can somehow just quietly play?
Also, I find it sad/ hilarious that he’s willing to say “No, of course I breathed all over children once I tested positive for Covid! But I would never fake a test…”
Jan, beautifully said!
This is what I was coming here to say – I thought lying on a visa application meant that you’d be refused entry (or kicked out) regardless of whether or not it was Covid related? Of course maybe the rules are different in Oz but yeah, I would have just assumed the government would have had grounds to boot him out based on that alone.
I think that was just a preliminary hearing to determine whether he can stay until the full hearing occurs. IIRC, he’s allowed to stay pending another hearing because he wasn’t given a chance to call Tennis Australia folks when he was first detained at the airport.
Plus his narcissistic spin on he’s been treated should be justification for his ousting!
Sean Paul says: “Deport Them”
Now, why does the Victorian government look bad? They did what they were suppose to do with everyone who enters the country. The Open lied to players and now we are seeing the results of it.
Enjoy that 3 year ban and not playing the Open, Douchebag.
Yeah I don’t get that either. In fact, I now have respect for their government (and zero respect for AO). None of us enjoy restrictions or getting the vaccine, but we did it because it was in the best interest of everyone. I’d be pissed if I found out that my government was making special exemptions for elite athletes.
I’m thinking he faked the test last minute (probably also paid off someone to change the test result in the database, that’s why we’re getting mixed results of the qr code) and didn’t think someone would dare to fact check him.
Fingers crossed he gets deported and get banned in Australia for 3 years.
Also in my country once you need to get tested, you need to quarantine pending the results. Can anyone from Serbia knows how it works over there?
I was to about to comment that if you had symptoms that made you get a test, why would you go around anyone whether you knew if you are positive or not? Shouldn’t matter what the quarantine rules are as it’s a matter of being a decent human being.
The fact that his family and others are saying he’s being unfairly persecuted because he is Serbian when he is and has been exercising extreme privilege and complete disregard for others (INCLUDING CHILDREN) is absolutely grotesque.
But typical.
This! They have been especially pissy about the German media calling NoVax DJoeCovid out. His family ended a press conference when a female German TV reporter asked about his movements during his “quarantine”. Seems like they can’t decide if they are being prosecuted for being Serbian or for being “closer to Jesus” than the rest of us. This martyrdom is just wow.
More entertaining than the AO could ever be.
That said, DjoCOVID is a liar and entitled, ignorant prick. Awaiting his maskless apology tour in 3…2…1…
Actually @ Jay I think what he’s saying is he didn’t know for sure at that point if the test would be positive so it was fine that he breathed all over a bunch of kids. However he did know for sure he was positive when he breathed all over the Equipe people (except for the person conducting the interview?) for his dumb photoshoot. Man I would be pissed if I were one of those other people! Regardless, when you’re exposed and waiting for a test you shouldn’t go maskless in close contact with people so this is terrible no matter how he tries to explain it away.
Wow, he took anti-vaxx selfishness to a whole new level. He knowingly spread his virus to unsuspecting children and their parents. Those children then spread it to their grandparents, who may have ended up with significant health consequences. And all because this uneducated jock doesn’t believe in modern medicine and thinks he is the second coming. Yuck. I’m angry and disgusted. I hope he gets deported, and I hope there is a backlash in Serbia from the victims of his recklessness.
I’ve always figured he faked the results.
I still need someone to clarify that if the deadline for AO for the exception was on the 10th, how could Novaxx being positive on the 16th allowed? And if he didn’t “get Covid” what was his planned?
And in court he or his lawyer said that he found out on the 16th, but on insta he says it wasn’t until after the kids thing on the 17th. 🤔
Can he go on a picnic at Hanging Rock and disappear already?
I’m leaning more into fake test result (with someone missing the memo that it needed to be by the 10th Dec) so he didn’t think he was infectious at those events.
Having said that, I have no problem believing that he would still have done all those things if it was a legit test. As others have said, privilege is one hell of a drug.
He lied in his statement- it came out in court that he got a positive result on 16th, not 17th as he said online.
Also he declared on the customs form that he hadn’t travelled in the 14 days prior to entering Australia- photographic evidence then emerged to show he went from Belgrade to Spain (which begs the question- how was he allowed in the EU unvaccinated).
Now that he’s been busted he’s blaming it on his assistant screwing up the form. False declarations like that are a federal offence and boring regular people would be at best deported straight away, and at worst arrested and (possibly) sent to jail.
With all this, and the very dodgy PCR test I can’t see how he will be allowed to stay. There are rumours that the government will announce its decision tomorrow, and that’s it’s not looking good for him.
The weirdest thing about the “mistake his agent made”:
Does he really think the world forgot that everyone signs their own form? Is he trying to say he is too important to read the forms he signs? Just wow.
I don’t follow tennis. Has he always been problematic?
Always been an arrogant a-hole.
Yes.
He is hugely talented but also known for often being ‘injured’ (at the beginning of his career he used to retire from matches he wasn’t going to win), taking forever to serve and using toilet breaks rather… tactically.
On a personal level apart from being a woo anti-vaxxer, he has also been seen associating with ultra-nationalist Serbs and mingling with people associated with genocides during the Balkan war.
I’ve honestly been wondering if this was a scheme to get him out of playing because he knows he can’t win this one. That the plan was to get him kicked out of the AO and sent home and he could play the “woe is me i am being persecuted” card. But now it has reached “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” level and he can’t back down.
Yes and always hated that he won’t be known as the GOAT even when he’s tied for the greatest (and will probably surpass 20 slams).
As Parish said, he would habitually fake injuries for time outs and miraculously win matches after. He would impersonate his peers for laughs. He came back from a huge slump to extraordinarily well in his 30s after going “gluten free”, his win trajectory does not make sense unless it’s doping.
More recently, he also hit the linesperson in the neck with a ball and was a victim about it.
What an ugly human inside and out. What a disgrace.
This is super irresponsible. He has a Serbian president out here defending his ass now they both look dumb
The QR gore thing is unreal
His ugliness goes much deeper than COVID. He associates with genocide deniers and those who have been found guilty of genocidal war crimes. Worth a Google. The man is trash.
He’s garbage, who thinks himself prize compost.
The positive test is either a fake or someone changed the timestamp from a later date; God I hate him
Can’t not laugh at how he broke the news that he lied on international travel documents, then IMMEDIATELY threw someone else under the bus in an attempt to play dumb and avoid consequences.
“My agent sincerely apologizes for the administrative mistake in ticket the incorrect box…”
The incompetence angle is also being embraced by the Serbian PM Brnabic:
“I do not know when he actually got the results, when he saw the results, so there is some grey area… the only answer to this can be provided by Novak.”
She has come out against him now that it is clear he broke Serbian quarantine rules.
Heinous. A coworker of my sister’s tested positive, and still blithely went to the grocery store and POSTED IT online. Isn’t there some way to prosecute people for this? We prosecuted folks for purposely coughing on people earlier in the pandemic.
I’m a big Novak fan, but this is all very gross and disappointing. I’m not sure I can look at him the same way now.
He legit should get tossed out and I hope he loses his sponsorships over this.
The arrogance in the way he lies is sickening. I hope they hold him accountable in Serbia as well for breaking their rules.
Hahahah what an imbecile, just when I think he can’t get any stupider more details come out about his selfishness and idiocy. I am NOT laughing that he was around people when he knew he was COVID positive. It doesn’t matter if he was masked with L’Equipe crew, they probably all got covid after and wondered where the heck they got it from, now they know. And he can pretend all he wants that he didn’t know he was COVID positive around those kids, he knew he was waiting on a PCR test and he knew many people who had tested positive after going to the basketball game. We all knew at that point how transmissible omicron was, he was just being selfish not because he “wanted to honor his commitments,” he’s a self-centered narcissist who thinks he knows more about medical science than actual scientists and doctors. Now it’s unclear if he’s faking he got covid or not a few weeks ago to use as an excuse to get into Australia unvaccinated but I guess that’s besides the point. He’s been lying to everyone around him and nothing he says can be trusted.
And to think that he thought no one would find out he got covid just a few weeks before getting into Australia or that he gave others covid because he was around them. All because he refuses to get vaccinated and follow covid rules. If Australia doesn’t kick him out, he will just think that he can do whatever he wants. He needs to be banned from all tournaments in 2022.
What a trash person. I can only hope sponsors drop him. Decency and science isn’t getting through, maybe money will.
As an added bonus I just realised all the people he gave Covid to would have had to isolate over Christmas… nice touch.
I think it’s worse than that. Since he didn’t reveal that he tested positive, those people may have had no idea that they even needed to isolate. How many of them went home for Christmas to visit grandma or play with nieces and nephews who were too young to be vaccinated?
I guess they might have tested before meeting with extended family (like everyone seemed to be doing at Christmas in the UK?)
If not, they would have indeed become unwitting superspreaders.
I hope he gets deported and banned from entering Australia for at least 5 years. That’s what he deserves. And the AO needs to be held accountable too, IF they colluded with him.
After all is said and done, he should lose every endorsement he has. Who wants THAT face shilling anything after what he’s done? He’s a liar and a cheat and has no respect for the game or for the lives of others.
yeah, this is something I don’t get. has Lacoste even put out any kind of statement, like “we’re waiting for the results of the Aus investigation”? anything? because it’s not a good look for them.
forget the whole “lied on his visa application” thing…the dude KNOWINGLY exposed people, including children, to Covid. That alone should move his sponsors to shun him.
He is Serbian, well my goodness this attitude is familiar to me from the US actually: Just won’t accept any personal responsibility toward others’ welfare. It’s high time people like this get consequences for lying and pretending they’re above the rules.
Stupidity, douchery, entitlement, malice etc. go beyond the borders… and white male victimhood of course.
A total tool who happens to be a good tennis player. Google who his sponsors are and make some racket about continuing to sponsor this jerk. I am BEYOND angry with him and all his nonsense. He has truly shown us who he is.
Spain is gonna investigate him too hahahah
Which some of it is Nadal related spite, but who cares when this idiot thinks he is above health rules?!?!?