Oliver Brown in the Telegraph has written a stirring tribute to the defiance and determination of Novak Djokovic, who “stuck it to the two countries who locked him out” by winning in both the U.S. and Australia this year. Here’s an excerpt.
As Novak Djokovic reclaimed his robes as the king of New York, it was jolting to recall how, a mere 12 months earlier, he had been barred even from entering the country. Just as in Australia, where he purged the horrors of last year’s deportation soap opera to seize his 10th title at Melbourne Park, he has proved that he is never more dangerous than when demonised. Lock him out, as two Grand Slam host nations have discovered, and he simply rebounds with twice the force.
A 24th major title represents an epochal feat, achieved by the most defiant athlete of this or any generation. Doubly astonishing is the fact that Djokovic could have 26 or 27 by now, were it not for the politicising of his vaccination status or his accidental thwacking of a loose ball into a lineswoman’s throat. That notorious default at the 2020 U.S. Open proved only a prelude to his casting as a global outcast, as the Serb fell foul of both Australia’s draconian COVID-19 border policy and the Biden administration’s continued extensions of the ban on unjabbed foreign nationals.
“Why, Novak, why?” asked Amol Rajan in a BBC interview, struggling to comprehend how the man in front of him could place a decision to remain unvaccinated above a tilt at tennis immortality. For Djokovic, it was not an either/or equation. He was already an all-time great by the time it became fashionable to pillory him as a dastardly anti-vaxxer. He could afford to wait out the moral panic of the pandemic and see how the pieces fell. It was, to judge by the renewed clarity of purpose with which he has returned, a shrewd calculation.
For Djokovic derives strength from knowing that he has not given an inch to his detractors. Whatever you might think of his choice in refusing the vaccine, you can hardly deny that he follows through on his convictions, even at a high personal cost. It was utterly absurd that he found himself exiled from the 2022 U.S. Open, given he had been allowed to compete in 2021, at a time of far stricter protocols. Little wonder that, in 2023, he has been a force reawakened on American soil, sweeping to glory both in Cincinnati and at Flushing Meadows.
The same story unfolded in Australia, where Djokovic’s response to his humiliating ordeal in a refugee detention centre the year before was to win every match in Adelaide and Melbourne. Where less iron-willed players might have been forgiven for nursing deep mental trauma at the memory of being incarcerated and ultimately expelled, he turned his nightmare into fuel. Now he has repeated the trick, performing since his U.S. travel ban as if he has never been away. “I wouldn’t say that it was easy,” he smiled. “But people love comeback stories. They motivate me.”
Well done Djokovic. Hugely deserved.
Worth reading in full.
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Anyone who uses a vax pass is participating in medical apartheid and should be ashamed of themselves.
Well said, especially using one to get into bloody Luxembourg.
It’s really simple now. Don’t wear a mask, don’t take the vaccine. Ever.
While I have this comment box open, do you remember the classic movie, The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston. I keep thinking about that movie. And the moment, where his ally, the woman of colour (I don’t recall her name), gets back to his apartment, and unwraps her scarf, to reveal that she too has become one of the zombies/vaccinated, and that chilling line: ‘Matthias sent me’. If you know it, you know what I’m talking about.
That’s all I hear these days when I read about someone else who has succumbed to the mask/vaccine madness: ‘Matthias sent me’.
Ok, that’s it, carry on.
Meanwhile in Austria (according to something I heard of yesterday): Police out in masses everywhere to hunt for unvaccinated in shops and other prohibited places. They’ve brought this on themselves! How dare they exercise a choice with THIS situation in the hospitals!
[THIS situation typically being someone claims something really bad will happen in a few weeks if his conjectures should turn out to be true for the first time, although I have no specific information on that]
Thanks for the nice article.
Hands up anyone who knows where Adolf Hitler was born and spent his formative years.
Here’s a piccy of one of the architects of our misfortune entering a local temple of worship.
“If you want to have a strong immune system, don’t cover your face – just stop stuffing it.”
Perhaps keeping a mask on whilst eating will do the trick.
They certainly don’t deserve General Patton’s grave anymore.
Another depressing postcard. It does seem that, for the moment at least, England seems to be an outlier in terms of restrictions. But why? This doesn’t seems to fit in with the global capitalist plan. Maybe we just seeing a delayed reaction before the upcoming by-elections?
Fuck Luxem…….. fuck it, can’t even be bothered to spell it
Well that just confirms that my decision not to have a foreign holiday was the right one
Correct, even having a holiday in dear old Blighty feels foreign nowadays.
Carrots in baked beans for breakfast! Weird!
Perhaps they should rename it “the paranoid inn” instead of Novotel.
Lovely writing Russell thank you the good old British sense of humour always prevails.
I went there on a school trip decades ago. It was shut. Good article, especially the following observation:
“Public health zealots now run the world, enabled by craven politicians, an alarmist media and dubious Big Tech organisations. Having travelled to five European countries in the last 16 months, I’ve noticed the screws getting tighter, not looser. (So much for the miraculous vaccines getting us back to normal!) It’s moderate tyranny dressed up in nurses’ scrubs. The lands we thought the most civilised have enacted the most authoritarian controls. But then wasn’t this the case in the 1930s, when one of the world’s most sophisticated nations started a cataclysmic conflict?”