On the day before the likely decision on the fate of what is currently the best tennis player in the world, the fronts have hardened further.

At the same time, the day produced an unsuspicious testimony about the conditions in the Australian deportation centers.

Because outside the country, the Czech tennis player Renata Voráčová, who was locked away for hours in the same hotel in which Novak Djokovic has been sitting since Thursday morning, gave a damning testimony to the conditions in Melbourne.

The Australians themselves, on the other hand, groan under an omicron wave that overwhelms large parts of the country - for the first time, more than one hundred thousand cases of infection were counted.

Christoph Hein

Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.

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In the state of Victoria, whose capital is Melbourne, a good 44,000 infections were identified on Sunday.

Many Australians are now viewing the cases of unvaccinated tennis players with due distance: the government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not allow many of them to return to their own country for almost two years.

Love relationships broke up as a result, families could not rush to the bedside of their dying people.

Viewed in this way, the fate of the athletes seems insignificant to many.

"Rules that used to apply no longer apply"

However, the Australian government once again did not give a good picture on Sunday: its officials requested that the process for deleting Djokovic's visa, which was scheduled for Monday morning at 10 a.m. local time (0 a.m. CET), be postponed to Wednesday. That would mean that the Serb would have been locked up for almost a week. To what extent he would then still be able to get his intended tenth title at the Australian Open starting on January 17th is questionable. Judge Anthony Kelly rejected the government's request anyway. This means that the 34-year-old's lawyers will first be able to present their arguments on Monday. From 3 p.m., the officers should be allowed to present their views.

Team Djokovic presented a 35-page statement on Saturday. In it, the world number one sums up the facts from his point of view: "I have declared that I will be infected with Corona in December 2021 and therefore have the right to a medical exemption in accordance with the regulations and guidelines of the Australian government." The report also contains one meticulous schedule of events at Tullamarine Airport after Djokovic's arrival from Dubai on Thursday night.

If he is correct, the border guards may have acted legally correct, but undoubtedly took the athlete very hard simply by depriving them of sleep.

The Serbian’s lawyers report that after the first contact with the border guards on Thursday morning twelve minutes after midnight, he had to keep talking until around 6 a.m. and did not get to sleep.

Contact with lawyers or the Tennis Australia Association, which had given him the special permit to enter the country without a vaccination, had not been made possible for him.

According to the attorney's admission, the officials put pressure on him to agree to his visa being withdrawn beforehand.