Dozens of global tennis stars forced into isolation from Covid-19 before the Australian Open faced local officials on Tuesday who refused to give athletes special treatment.
Several players, including world number 1 Novak Djokovic – who contracted the coronavirus in June – questioned mandatory quarantines in hotels in Adelaide and Melbourne in order to prevent the virus from spreading before the tournament.
Other players accessed Twitter to vent about the quality of food in hotels and the lack of access to tennis courts. A player’s girlfriend regretted having to wash her hair without access to the beauty salon.
Some athletes grouped began to rearrange the furniture and throw balls against the walls to make up for lost time in training.
The furor started after more than 1,200 players, coaches and staff arrived on 17 charter flights to prepare for the Australian Open, which begins on February 8. Coronavirus cases linked to at least three of the flights forced 72 players to quarantine, according to Tennis Australia, the governing body.
Australia, which has one of the strictest Covid-19 restrictions in the world, has almost always closed its borders, although there are exceptions. All arrivals must go through a mandatory quarantine period, with each state having its own restrictions.
Victorian state premier Daniel Andrews explained why officials refused a request by Djokovic on behalf of the players to move athletes to private residences with tennis courts.
“People are free to ask for things, but the answer is no,” Andrews told reporters at a televised news conference. “They knew where they were traveling and we are not saving or making special arrangements.”
Some athletes, however, said they did not know what they were getting into before traveling to Australia and criticized the lack of information before arriving at the tournament.
“What I don’t understand is that, because nobody has ever told us, if a person on board is sure that the entire plane needs to be isolated, I would think twice before coming here,” said the world’s number 28, Yulia Putintseva, who also shared videos of a mouse in his hotel room.
Romania Sorana Cirstea rejected the notion that she and other players were “entitled”.
“I have no problem staying in the living room watching Netflix for 14 days. Believe me, this is a dream come true … What we can’t do is COMPETE after we have been on a couch for 14 days,” she tweeted.
Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said the quarantine was “designed to protect the community” but defended the players’ right to call for restrictions to be eased.
“These are high-performance athletes and it is difficult to keep a high-performance athlete in a room,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“This is the contribution they have to make to gain the privilege of going out to compete for $ 80 million Australian dollars ($ 62 million) in cash prizes.”
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Djokovic, who won the men’s Australian Open last year, had already faced criticism for not wearing a mask in public, organizing games without measures of social distance and embracing players in restaurants and night clubs after the games.
Last April, he told the media that he would not be “forced by someone to get a vaccine” to gamble.
Some players, however, criticized the behavior of their fellow athletes.
“I’m actually ashamed of being a tennis player these days,” wrote a Russian born Arina Rodionova on twitter.
While twice Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka said in a statement that she understood the “frustration” of the other players, but asked for more “understanding and empathy for the local community” and sensitivity for those who lost jobs and loved ones in the pandemic.
A smaller group of players who landed in Adelaide, including Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Rafael Nadal, are allowed to go out for limited training sessions under biosafety protocols.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
