To each Novak Djokovic his nickname. The latest, “Djo-Kosovo”, was decked out on him Monday, May 29 by the specialized press, after his last escapade. This time, neither conspiracy thesis nor appeal to pseudosciences, of which he has the secret. The Serbian tennis player, third in the world, simply split a message, written in white marker on one of the cameras on the Philippe-Chatrier court at Roland Garros: “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia! Stop the violence”. And here is the athlete at the heart of a new controversy.
In the middle of the tournament in Paris, and while clashes against NATO broke out in northern Kosovo, the Serb made his victory in the first round of the competition a platform against the independence of the country. A dedication moved, according to the French Minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. “It must not start again,” she said two days later, on France 2. That the player lay low? It is misunderstanding Novak Djokovic, who in recent years has become the assumed muse of “all alternative” and other “anti”: anti-gluten, anti-science, anti-system, anti-rationality…
From his second match, the tennis player reiterates: “A lot of people do not agree, but that’s what I think”, he repeats after a new victory this Thursday, June 1. Nothing new. “We are ready to defend what belongs to us”, he already agitated in 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence. Since then, Novak Djokovic, whose father was born in Kosovska Mitrovica (a city in northern Kosovo), has been photographed many times with ultranationalists, including the Wolves of the Drina, a unit that participated in the Srebrenica massacres. Until making three-finger salutes on the court, a symbol of the Serbian militias of the Yugoslav wars.
An esoteric artifact to make him win
Another facet, another nickname. On Wednesday, May 31, the player also stood out for the strange artifact he wore, taped to the hollow of his sternum. A coin-sized piece of metal that this time earned him the nickname Avenger Djokovic on social media. “My team has developed a nanotechnology system that allows me to give the best of myself on the court,” explained the player very seriously at a press conference. The reference to Iron Man, a Marvel hero with a reactor instead of a heart, amuses the gallery, but it is not trivial.
In Iron Man, Tony Stark draws his power from the energy of the Tesseract, a cosmic cube, extra-terrestrial infinity stone. “In perpetual research to perfect his body”, as he explained to The Team in February 2022, Novak Djokovic also fuels the energies of the beyond. “I know people who, through energy transformation, the power of prayer, the power of gratitude, manage to transform the most toxic foods and the most polluted water into the most purifying water,” he said. in the spring of 2020, live on the Instagram social network, where he is followed by 12.7 million people.
The world number 3 then showed his huge community his closeness to Chervin Jafarieh, boss of the food supplement brand Cymbiotika. The businessman believes that thought can modify the “micromechanisms of water”, and thus heal. An idea also defended by Masaru Emoto, Japanese author and champion of pseudosciences. He also claims that water could deliver “hidden messages”. Of these two characters accused of being gurus, Novak Djokovic regularly echoes.
Esoteric doctrines of all kinds
His passion for mysticism, magic, and esoteric doctrines of all kinds, Novak Djokovic displays it shamelessly, and even promotes it, more or less actively. Like this time, still in 2020, where he goes to the hill of a village in Bosnia called Visoko. According to its operator, Semir Osmanagic, the place is actually the pyramid of a hidden civilization, much older than that of the Egyptians, and at a technological level much higher than ours. The visit of the tennis player is filmed. He calls himself “regenerated”. Tourism in the village is booming.
When Novak Djokovic, “from a country torn apart by war”, crazy about tennis since he was four years old, as he likes to remember, did he switch? His bloody outbursts on the pitch show a man ruled by his emotions. His relationship with a Spanish “mental coach” who would have pulled him out of depression thanks to “hugs” and meditation, Pepe Imaz, does not prevent him from giving in to anger. Last crisis? No later than this Wednesday. On the clay court of Roland Garros, caught up in the score by his opponent of the day, he still started to scream against the members of his staff. Their fault? Not being talkative enough in their encouragement. “Nervousness is part of the job, of what I am”, then defended the champion, in a press conference.
It is therefore difficult to identify a particular moment that would have led Novak Djokovic far from scientific rationality. However, an astonishing episode appears to be founding. It would have changed everything according to him. He even made a book of it, published in 2013: Winning service: a gluten-free diet for perfect physical and mental fitness. In the book, he says that a gluten-free diet would have put an end to his “curse”, this “mysterious force which, without warning, sapped (his) energy”. Asthma attacks and unexplained discomfort, persisting despite several nose operations, similar to anxiety attacks. The only limit to his “obsessive” quest, as he says himself, for the title of best tennis player in the world.
The miracle of gluten-free
Beyond attributing a quasi-miracle effect to a dietary change, the way in which he was diagnosed as gluten intolerant is, at the very least, charlatanism. In the quarter-finals of the Australian Open in 2010, Novak Djokovic lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Behind his television, a curious Serbian naturopathic energy specialist would have had a revelation, which he tells the Dubai daily GulfNews : “From my observations and my experience acquired by traditional Chinese medicine, I could see that asthma is not the problem […] I suspected that in Novak’s case, the breathing issues were the result of an imbalance in his digestive system, specifically due to a buildup of toxins in his large intestine.”
The two men met in July 2010, during a match in Croatia. Igor Cetojevic makes him pass a battery of eccentric tests, such as analyzing the resistance of his arms without and with a piece of bread placed on his stomach, at stomach level. In the latter case, “I was visibly weaker”, writes the player. “It’s a sign that your body is rejecting the wheat contained in the bread”, replies the pseudo-specialist. These methods, against all the knowledge acquired by science and medicine, Novak Djokovic lists them in his book, and brandishes them as a truth, a universal solution, on social networks.
Accused of spreading anti-science theses, the player finally defended himself in an interview given to The Team in February 2022. That day, he delivers a very different version from the one he presents in his book and on his social networks. He calls for people to respect his personal choices and leave him in peace, rejecting the role of anti-science activist, explaining in particular that he continues to consult conventional doctors. “I’m not asserting anything […] But closed-minded people will judge. If someone disagrees with me, no problem. But why attack? Because I’m spreading false information? But I’m just asking questions […]”.
These “questions” asked by Novak Djokovic, however, led him to be arrested by the Australian authorities in January 2022. He had tried to enter the country without being vaccinated, and lied on his health declaration. An episode that earned him one of his most popular nicknames, “Novax”. “Novak has become the symbol and leader of the free world, the world of poor and oppressed nations and peoples,” his father told Serbian media at the time. Telegraf, while placards bearing his likeness were held up during anti-vax demonstrations, particularly in France. Whether Novak Djokovic likes it or not, his words are like his bullets: followed by effects.