Today, Explained - Novax Djokovic

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

How the best-ranked men’s tennis player in the world went to Australia to become the greatest of all time and ended up being detained. Today’s show was produced by Will Reid with help from Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey with help from Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. The top-ranked men's tennis player in the whole wide world recently boarded a plane to Australia with hopes of winning another title and instead wound up in immigration purgatory. And before we explore how exactly that happened, there are a few things you need to know about Novak Djokovic. First, he has a penchant for getting himself into trouble. You might remember when he was recently booted from the U.S. Open after losing a point when he smashed a ball in

anger and accidentally hit a line person in the throat. Second, he's really obsessed with what he puts in his body. He famously attributes much of his record-breaking success on the court to a Serbian nutritionist who held a piece of white bread against his stomach in 2010 and determined he had a gluten allergy. And lastly, Djokovic, if he wins this Australian Open, will go down as the GOAT, the greatest men's tennis player of all time, title 21, edging out Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. At present, they're all tied at 20 titles. That sets the stage for this year's Australian Open in Melbourne, which is set to begin Monday. So Melbourne prides itself on being the sporting capital of Australia. Tom Maddox prides himself on being a sports reporter at ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And the Australian Open is really one of a few major events

that run each year in Melbourne. It's known as the Happy Slam, which is this phrase that was initially coined by none other than Roger Federer. We had the best time as a family and as a team, so thank you very much for just making it so special. Like Maren said, you guys are unbelievable as a country and as a team. So thank you very much for just making it so special. Like Marin said, you guys are unbelievable as a country and people. So this happy slam, it runs in Australia's summer.

It gets very, very hot indeed. 104 degrees at the Australian Open there in Melbourne. It's the opening grand slam. It's the first of the grand slams. And the players love it. And so do the spectators and the media indeed. It's been tough for Melburnians. We had spent more than 245 days in lockdown during the length of the pandemic.

We've experienced more days of lockdown than any other major city in the world. You know, it's a multi-layered context which might go towards explaining the reaction or the response from the Victorian and the Australian public to this Novak Djokovic saga. And so that reputation of the happy slam is really on the line at the moment. It's under threat. And it's notable here that at last year's Australian Open, you know, athletes were given an exception and that was controversial, right? Totally. If there's a sniff of double standards in Australia, then there's furor. You know, we've got very much a case of the tall poppy syndrome.

So that's why a guy like Djokovic might be. What's the tall poppy syndrome? Well, basically, we'll cut you down if you're too good. And so Novak Djokovic is a guy who's good, right? But he kind of shows it in his attitude in some ways, and he's quite a confident fella. And so I think not being vaccinated aside, he's quite a contentious figure in Australian consciousness. And so if there's a sniff of double standards and these stars,

these athletes getting some exception, and we don't like it. So last year's tournament, as you suggest, was pretty contentious in itself. And many are very suspicious of all these players arriving with the risk of an increase in community transmission of COVID, which has virtually been eradicated. And they're in a really, really good situation compared to anybody else who's quarantining in Australia, including Australians returning home. Not only are they allowed out, but they're also in five-star hotels.

And this year, there's been an expectation it would go ahead, but really preparations have been quite overshadowed by this doubt surrounding Novak Djokovic's vaccination status. Djokovic said, quote, personally, I'm opposed to vaccination and I wouldn't want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel. The media here have repeatedly covered how he's been deliberately opaque and that he's refused to say if he's been jabbed.

But he had said he'd been waiting out for Tennis Australia and the government's here to outline the rules for the tournament. So that's the setup. Where does this current controversy begin? So on the night prior to him leaving to fly to Australia, he posted on Instagram a photo of him with some tennis bags packed. It looked like it was outside an airport, you know, almost on the tarmac, basically. And his post basically said, you know, happy new year, happy and healthy, you know, thanks for your support.

Just wanted to let you know that I'm headed down under with an exemption permission. Interesting phrasing there. So that really put in motion a number of fresh headlines because we weren't quite expecting that to be honest. Before he arrived, Australia's Prime Minister had a warning. We await his presentation and what evidence he provides to support that. If that evidence is insufficient, then he won't be treated any different to anyone else and he'll be on the next plane home. He landed about half past 11 on Wednesday night last week

and he's in fact produced his certificate or his documents prior to boarding the plane that emerged in the court case. And then he's coming through customs, through border force, as we call it in Australia, immigration authorities. And he produces these documents, which have a letterhead of Tennis Australia. And he produces this so-called medical exemption.

And border force aren't happy. They're not happy with the documents he's produced, and he's detained. His father says that he's been detained in a room without his phone, under armed guard, and effectively, it's a bit of a limbo situation, and the media is waiting outside where we think Novak Djokovic is being effectively detained by immigration authorities. And then we get the word from the government, the Commonwealth government that is, which is an important distinction here, that they've decided to revoke his visa. Why is the Commonwealth government an important distinction? It's quite a bureaucratic country, Australia, in many ways.

We have state governments, we have local councils, and we also have a federal government, a Commonwealth government. It's important in this case because they've made the decision, the Commonwealth government, to rescind his visa, but he had been granted this medical exemption via two medical panels established by Tennis Australia and by the health department in the state of Victoria, so effectively the Victorian government. Seemingly, for Novak Djokovic, he's been given the all-clear, the green light from not one but two medical, independent medical bodies. He's got to Australia and then the federal government denies that exemption. And then what proceeds is just a litany of buck passing, politicians handballing, tennis officials handballing the issue around. Nobody really wanted to touch it at that point. And in the meantime, you've got one of the biggest tennis stars in the world, one of the most legendary athletes to play the game, basically in some

sort of immigration jail? You could put it that way. I mean, he's taken from Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport to an immigration hotel detention. This is the immigration detention hotel where Novak Djokovic is being kept. You know, a pretty basic hotel on the outskirts of Melbourne's CBD. And what emerged pretty quickly, what the media established, was he was being put in the same hotel as a group of asylum seekers. Adnan Chopani has been here for five months now, after being moved from another facility. I live in level two and Djokovic lives in level one.

So there was this great dichotomy, I guess, between this Serbian tennis player, this privileged, healthy athlete, and then these refugees who had been in that hotel since late 2020 and in fact had been in one form of detention in Australia for up to nine years. That is the food we've been saved every day by containers. We found a margul and mowed on a bread. What proceeded then was not only Novak fans outside that hotel, but refugee advocates. Those refugee advocates decided then to try and highlight

as best they could the plight of the refugees who had been detained in that hotel for much, much longer than Novak Djokovic. Of course, unlike those asylum seekers, Novak Djokovic isn't long for this hotel detention center. He lawyers up and gets out, yeah? Yeah, he ends up spending four nights in there, but he engages some top barristers in Melbourne. There's a court hearing in the Federal Circuit and Family Court in Melbourne. And basically the ruling sensationally, the outcome of this court hearing that was handed down on Monday evening was that Djokovic hadn't been afforded enough time on that morning

when he was detained by authorities and when they decided to revoke his visa. So when they made that decision, the judge ruled that he wasn't given enough time to respond. But that doesn't necessarily mean he can play tennis. It doesn't. And this is one of the bizarre things about this story. So you would think that if a judge rules in a case, then that's basically game, set and match, right? But as the situation stands, the federal immigration minister, Alex Hawke. He has this discretionary power to recancel Novak Djokovic's visa and send him home. And in the meantime, since this decision to let Novak stay on Monday in Australia, what have we learned about how he got a medical exemption to begin with. What we've learned since then is that Novak Djokovic had a test and tested positive to

coronavirus on the 16th of December. That was part of this exemption he was given. So that was certainly the impression that he was given from Tennis Australia. If he had tested positive at any point, in fact, in the last six months, that enables you to defer your vaccination and to enter Australia without having the vaccination proof. But what's emerged is a number of photos of Novak Djokovic in the days following, showing him attending public events. I think there's an event with kids who are learning to play tennis. He's photographed with them shaking their hands, arms around their shoulders, no mask. He also takes

some press photos for the publication Le Keep. And we don't know when Djokovic was notified of that positive result, mind you. But alongside these photos, it's also emerged that it appears as though he hasn't quarantined for the 14 days as per the requirement when you do return a positive result in Serbia. It's also emerged that despite declaring on his travel declaration form in arriving in Australia that he hasn't traveled in the past 14 days, it appears he has. It appears he's traveled from Belgrade to Spain in the last two weeks. So questions have emerged basically asking whether Novak Djokovic has lied. So he's either lying about a positive test result or perhaps a one-man super spreading

roadshow. It doesn't look good either way, does it really? And coincidentally, if he does get on that court, he may very well become the most winning tennis player in the history of the men's game. And that's the thing. That's what's at stake here is that politics and the drama aside, there is so much at stake for Novak Djokovic. At the moment, he sits on 20 Grand Slam singles titles, along with the great Rafael Nadal, the great Roger Federer. But of course, Roger Federer is not here in Melbourne for this year's tournament.

He's recovering from injury and he couldn't make it out this year. Rafael Nadal's here despite testing positive to COVID-19 recently. But of course, he's the king of clay. And so Novak Djokovic, this is his domain. He's won this title, this Grand Slam, nine times, which is very, very impressive indeed. He won it last year. He's fit and healthy and ready to go, aside from contracting COVID-19 seemingly a couple of weeks ago. And so, you know, if there wasn't this drama and if you were a betting man,

you'd be putting your money on Novak Djokovic to win the Australian Open this year. Maybe you completely get why an athlete wouldn't want to put some vaccine in their body, but athletes seem especially susceptible to medical quackery too, like more than you'd think. That's in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp.

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Corbin Smith, you write about sports, you wrote about sports and athletes who question vaccines for the Daily Beast, and it turns out it's not just Novak. No, I mean, it's not just any one person in any profession. It really reminds me of another tendency of athletes. You know, they tend to get linked into some scientific woo-woo type stuff. You know, Aaron Rodgers on the Green Bay Packers, Kyrie Irving who plays for the Nets, and, you know, lots of other lesser known players. It's pretty uncommon, but there's a few of them and they all

seem to really stick out. And you'd think a group of people with access to, you know, some of the best doctors in the world whose profession has been interrupted by COVID-19 would be, you know, the easiest group to get universally vaccinated, but why aren't they? If you look back into the history of all this, professional athletes as a group, they've always been attracted to quack science. There's a lot of examples of it around history. I mean, so the fact that this is linked on to some athletes, I mean, it shouldn't be that surprising. They're always looking for alternatives. And this isn't a COVID thing you're saying. This is going back in time. How far back does this go? The dang 19th century, folks.

There was a pitcher from St. Louis. His name was Jim Galvin. Pud was his nickname. Pud? Yeah. Like mud with a P. He was called Pud. He was short.

And so there's a part of me that thinks that like he was actually called Pud because he was short. And they were like, look at that little Pud. But they said it was because his pitching would turn his opponents into pudding at the mound uh had a great career but in 1889 just worried about losing his edge a little you know what i mean and so he uh turned to charles edouard brownard, a neurologist who actually was a legitimate scientist in a lot of ways, who contributed to neurology, things like that. Brown-Sacquard whipped together at some point, Brown-Sacquard elixir. And what it was, was an extract made from dog and guinea pig

testicles. Excuse me? An extract made from a dog and guinea pig testicles that did what well it was supposed to work as a uh sort of hormone injection okay so pud would have this injected into him and he and brown sicard were operating on the idea that like yeah it's animal testosterone it's gonna jack you up it's testosterone now on a certain level brown saccade is right in the abstract uh because there are injectable testosterone that do make it easier for you to train but they're human ones they're like synthetic human ones they're not dog and guinea pig ones somebody did do a study on the brown saccade formula and it does not work here's the messed up part is that pud kind of got his groove back oh it worked well yeah you know and he told he would like tell the reporters like no yeah i got guinea pig testosterone flowing through my veins

and reporters were like oh that's great and people would say like yeah absolutely man that is awesome i wish our players would use this uh dog nut juice and uh which is also a little weird because like a hundred years later it would become like the primary moral panic in america that a professional athlete might use steroids can you believe it yeah but you know it didn't really work but you know the placebo effect exists it might have given a Yeah, but, you know, it didn't really work. But, you know, the placebo effect exists. It might have given him a little mental edge. Or, you know, baseball players, there's a lot of year-to-year variation in their careers. And it's possible that he started taking dog testosterone and then he got lucky.

So, you know, who knows? What are some more recent examples of professional athletes you know deferring to medical quackery let me tell you about a little device called the power balance bracelet what i have to demonstrate for you today is a revolutionary new product what we've been able to do is harness naturally occurring frequencies and program them into a mylar hologram to help improve your balance your strength and your flexibility. The Power Balance Bracelet. The Power Balance Bracelet, folks.

It did some incredible magic. Here's what it was. It was a bracelet, and it had a little hologram in it. And if you wore it, they said it would improve your balance. One of the great things about this product is that they don't actually need to be wearing it. They can either be holding it. I could set it on the top of his head. It wouldn't matter.

All that matters is that the product is within one to three inches of your body's energy field. So now... Were athletes having a difficult time balancing? Yeah, you do have a difficult time balancing when you are pushing your body to the limits of balance. You know what I mean? Like, it's easy for us

to balance. We're soft boys. There's not a lot of stress that we're putting on our bodies are these guys they got to turn on a dime 10 times a night they got to do everything they can to not fall down to not lose that dang ball so somebody said yeah well you know these hologram bracelets they'll uh keep you balanced and some athletes said yeah all right now one of themq. He cut an advertisement for them. I don't really do a lot of testimonials, but this works. My name is Shaquille O'Neal, and I'm one of the power aboundance generals.

I will say this about Shaq. I suspect that Shaq knew it was a grip. Oh, he did? Okay. But they paid him lots of money? Yes. The man loves his money and is cannier than he appears. I got a question for the folks at Radio Shack.

Who's in charge of spelling around here? But Lamar Odom, not as canny as Shaquille O'Neal, like legitimately invested in the company, like gave them money. It did not end well because eventually the company did pay out in a class action lawsuit for misleading advertising because they said that a bracelet with a hologram and it made you balance better. Okay, we're still talking about athletes who are retired. How about contemporary athletes? Brady! Tommy Brady, baby. Thomas Brady? Thomas Brady.

Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. Wait, is it really Thomas Edward Patrick Brady? Yeah, man. Oh my God. Yes, all of them. First off, Brady is vaccinated. Hooray, I guess. But Brady had started working with this trader named Alex Guerrero

and called him his body coach. Guerrero has been banned or sanctioned by the FTC for referring to himself as a doctor. He totally just peddles a bunch of weird fake cures for things. But Brady hooked up with him, and he got really into this theory of working out that was basically that you didn't need to be jacked to stay healthy. What you needed was the ability for your muscles

to absorb contact and then bounce back huh pliability is at the core of the tb12 lifestyle it's what keeps me going on the field year after year there are two parts now it should go without saying this is not this is nonsense it's nonsense no this is not real okay uh there's scientific. There's never been a double blind study. But what Brady did was that he doubled down. He went as deep into this as he possibly could. And he and yeah, he got into business with Guerrero. And there was a TB12 training facility that was built across the street from the Patriots facility.

And a lot of Patriots would like go get treatment there. Okay. Brady vaccinated. Aaron Rodgers. Not vaccinated. And also, you know, a recent host of the Jeopardy program. What's his deal? And a winner on Jeopardy. A man of knowledge. A man of knowledge, a guy who stood up for Kaepernick. But he said he was listening to Joe Rogan? All the best minds of our generation have been whistled into the ocean by Joe Rogan's beautiful siren song.

Is there any through line here from, you know, PUD in the 19th century to Aaron and Novak and Kyrie and I guess less so Tom Brady in the 21st? What I think ties all this stuff together is the sense of athletes wanting to be in control of their own bodies. Like, Pud is getting dinged by the ravages of time. It happens to us all. Pud wants to feel like he's in control of his career. So he injects, you knows guinea pig testicle extract. It's the same thing with Brady, where this stuff might not work, but it gives Brady an intense sense that he is in control here.

It's the same with Irving. It's the same with Rodgers. The fact of the matter is that they want control over their own bodies. When you are a professional athlete, your body becomes a commodity. And I think that part of the reason that people sort of latch on to these sort of stray things, they want to feel like they're in control of the commodity that is going to pay for the rest of their life. I mean, the stakes are higher for athletes, right? The stakes are incredibly high for athletes. And in the case of Novak Djokovic, who is on the cusp of becoming the most winning champion in the history of men's tennis, the stakes literally couldn't be any higher.

I mean, should we be giving athletes like him a bit more of, I don't know, a pass or some leeway for hesitating to mess with their physiology? I think that the government should do anything in their power to make life as inconvenient for unvaccinated people as possible. So like practically no, but philosophically, yeah, cut them a break. Like when your body is your stock in trade, I think that it makes sense that you're paranoid about it. Is there a lesson here for those of us who are not professional athletes? Is there something we can take away from the story of Novak Djokovic and the company that he's in?

It's all just a struggle for control. I think that a normal standard anti-vaxxer has the same craving for control that a professional athlete does. Corbin Smith writes about sports. Among other things, you can find his writing on Aaron Rodgers and Kyrie Irving and company over at The Daily Beast. Earlier in the show, you heard from Tom Maddox. He's with the ABC in Australia. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm with VOX in Washington, D.C. Our show today was produced by our lead tennis correspondent, Will Reed, with an assist from Victoria Chamberlain.

It is Today Explained. Thank you.