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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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 people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this happy slam, it runs in Australia's summer. It gets very, very hot indeed. It's 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 too the spectators and the media indeed.
--:-- Tom Maddox: It's been tough for Melburnians. we had spent more than 245 days in lockdown during the length of the pandemic. 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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, athletes were given an exception and that was controversial, right?
--:-- Tom Maddox: Totally. If there's a sniff of double standards in Australia, then there's furor. We've got very much a case of the tall poppy syndrome.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's the tall poppy syndrome?
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: and so if there's a sniff of double standards and these stars, these athletes getting some exception, then 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that's the setup. Where does this current controversy begin?
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Interesting phrasing there. So that really put in motion a number of fresh headlines because we weren't quite expecting that, to be honest.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He lands at 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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 medical exemption and border force unhappy They not happy with the documents he produced and he detained His father says that he 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: Why is the Commonwealth government an important distinction?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, he's taken from Melbourne's Tullamarine airports 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I live in level two and Djokovic live 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: That is the food. We've been saved every day by containers. We found a margol and moored on a bread.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What preceded 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: Of course, unlike those asylum seekers, Novak Djokovic isn't long for this hotel detention center. He lawyers up and gets out, yeah?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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
--:-- Tom Maddox: It doesn't
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's also emerged that despite declaring on his travel declaration form in arriving in Australia that he hasn't travelled in the past 14 days, it appears he has. It appears he's travelled from Belgrade to Spain in the last two weeks.
--:-- Tom Maddox: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It doesn't look good either way, does it really?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Tom Maddox: And that's like, 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 tournament he recovering from injury and he couldn make it out this year Rafael Nadal here despite testing positive to COVID recently But of course, he's the king of clay.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's in a minute on Today Explained. support for today explained comes from built rewards these days it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards. Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining built.com That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: human help when you need it. Learn more at Schwab.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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 a profession.
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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 plays for the Nets, and, you know, lots of other lesser-known players.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Corbin Smith: And this isn't a COVID thing you're saying. This is going back in time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How far back does this go?
--:-- Corbin Smith: The dang 19th century, folks. There's a pitcher from St. Louis. His name is Jim Galvin. Pud was his nickname. Pud? Yeah. Like mud was a pee. 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Pud. had a great career, but in 1889, he's worried about losing his edge a little. You know what I mean? And so he turned to Charles-Edouard Brown-Sacquard, a neurologist who actually was a legitimate scientist in a lot of ways, who contributed to neurology, things like that.
--:-- Corbin Smith: Brown-Sacquard whipped together at some point. Brown-Sacquard elixir. What it was was an extract made from dog and guinea pig testicles. Excuse me? An extract made from dog and guinea pig testicles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That did what? Well, it was supposed to work as a 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, this animal testosterone is going to jack you up. It's testosterone.
--:-- Corbin Smith: Now, on a certain level, Brown-Sicard is right in the abstract because there are injectable testosterones, 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Somebody did do a study on the Brown-Sicard formula and it does not work.
--:-- Corbin Smith: Here's the messed up part is that Pud kind of got his groove back. Oh, it worked. Well, you know, and he, he would like tell 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 i 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 little mental edge or you know baseball players, there's a lot of year-to-year variation in their careers.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's possible that he started taking dog testosterone and then he got lucky. So, you know, who knows?
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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 energy field
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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. 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.
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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 them was shaq 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 balance 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The man, the man loves his money and, and is, and is cannier than he appears.
--:-- Corbin Smith: I got a question from the folks at Radio Shack. Who's in charge of spelling around here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: Yeah, man. Oh my God. Yes, all of them. First off, Brady is vaccinated. Hooray, I guess. But he, Brady had started working with this trader named Alex Guerrero. And called him his body coach. uh guerrero has been banned or you know sanctioned by the fdc for referring to himself as a doctor he totally just peddles a bunch of weird fake cures for things but brady you know hooked up with him and he uh got really into this theory of working out that was basically that you didn't need to be you know jacked to stay healthy okay what you needed was the ability for your muscles to like absorb contact and then bounce back.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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 to pliability. Now, it should go without saying this is nonsense. It's nonsense. No, this is not real. Okay. There's nothing scientific. There's never been a double blind study.
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: All the best minds of our generation have been whistled into the ocean by Joe Rogan's beautiful Zyron song.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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, and it happens to us all. Pud wants to feel like he's in control of his career, so he injects, you know, guinea pig testicle extract.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: it's the same thing with Brady where like this stuff might not work but it gives Brady an intense sense that he is in control here and you know 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 anything 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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 him a break. Like when your body is your stock in trade, I think that it makes sense that you're paranoid about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
--:-- Corbin Smith: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Earlier in the show, you heard from Tom Maddox. He's with the ABC in Australia. I'm Sean Ramos for him with VOX in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our show today was produced by our lead tennis correspondent, Will Reed, with an assist from Victoria Chamberlain. It is Today Explained. Thank you.
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