Novak Djokovic recently publicly hinted at corruption in the investigation of Jannik Sinner, Iga Swiatek’s doping. Now the Serbian has attacked the ATP.
Novak Djokovic recently called out ITIA over their investigation of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek’s doping scandals. The Serb once again decided to make his feelings known as he took on the ATP for not providing better conditions for tennis players to earn as much as athletes from other sports.
During a press conference at the Brisbane International, he said, “We have problem there.We have a problem in the very – how can I say – structure of the ATP is that as players we only have the 50% of that organization. There’s always – not always but a lot of times there was conflict of interest between tournaments and players. We wanted different thing. The pie split between the governing bodies in major sports, all major American sports, like NFL, NBA, baseball, NHL, is 50% maybe more, some less, but around 50%. Ours is way lower than that. It is true.”
Djokovic in the past formed the Professional Tennis Players’ Association to address these concerns. During an earlier interview with a CBS program, he said, “Women and men who are around 200 and lower ranked in the world, they are struggling a lot. They can’t afford a coach, they can’t afford travels, they skip tournaments, many of them leave tennis who are super talented and maybe capable of reaching great heights and successes, but they just can’t make it.”
Recently when the Serb publicly called out ITIA, he asked the body why tennis players were being treated differently in similar doping incidents, and also hinted that Sinner, Swiatek could have had better financial backing and powerful lawyers.
Sinner’s doping controversy took place during his victorious US Open 2024 title run. A week before the Grand Slam, the ITIA revealed that the Italian had twice tested positive for clostebol in March. But then an independent tribunal accepted his defence that it was due to unintentional contamination. Then in September, the WADA appealed the verdict to CAS, which was accepted. The CAS verdict will be passed this year.
Meanwhile, Swiatek’s doping scandal took place in November, with the ITIA announcing that her sample from August came back positive due to unintentional contamination of melatonin pills. She was provisionally suspended for 22 days and then served a one-month ban.
