There is no time to waste, thinks Novak Djokovic: everything for the Games. Consequently, the Serbian tennis player will undergo surgery this Wednesday in Paris – according to reports L’Equipe—, with the aim of repairing the knee that was damaged during the round of 16 duel against the Argentine Francisco Cerúndolo. “Tear of the medial meniscus,” stated the report issued by Roland Garros. He would therefore miss Wimbledon (starting on July 1) and will do everything possible to arrive in time for this summer’s big event in the French capital, starting on the 26th, his latest obsession. After having collected all the trophies and almost all the records there have been and will be, the 37-year-old Belgrade wants to round out his career with the Olympic gold that has been denied him until now. He won the bronze in Beijing 2008, but he knows little about it. And, given the panorama, he prioritizes.
As required L’Equipe, the intervention will force Nole to be out for at least three weeks, so he would not reach the great British and will entrust himself to the treatments and rehabilitation that he will undertake starting tomorrow to be able to attend the Olympic event in Paris. When maneuvering in one direction or another, the desire to win that gold weighs and the Balkan takes into account the demands of the grass, a territory that is especially harmful to the knees, slippery and that forces the player to bend pronouncedly and practically joint constant. Therefore, he chooses. At his age, the possibility of participating in other Games is reduced and Los Angeles 2028—the next ones on the program—are far away. “I would love to be there, but it’s every four years and I can’t commit,” he said in October.
Aware that those from Paris may be the last shot, he reacts immediately. On Monday, that “slight discomfort” with which he arrived at the tournament led to the injury, he suffered on the court and won; On Tuesday morning he was already at a clinic to have an MRI; and this Wednesday, already ruled out by the great Frenchman, he will put himself in the hands of surgeons, who will address the meniscus using the arthroscopic technique, the least invasive. Djokovic begins a time trial whose outcome is uncertain, in reality; Indeed, “it could arrive,” say different experts, but another is how, in what state he does it. They will always be according to L’Equipea minimum of three weeks of break, and then a margin of less than three to get in tune and try to recover more or less optimal conditions.
If he ultimately cannot compete at Wimbledon, the major English will lose another attraction, Rafael Nadal having already suggested that he will not compete in this edition. Nole is, after Roger Federer (8), the second male tennis player with the most trophies (7). Specifically, he triumphed in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022.
Always reluctant to use the scalpel, in 2016 he began to fight with a delicate bone injury in his right elbow that in the end left him no choice, so in 2018, after a six-month break, he underwent an operation in Switzerland that became known when he was caught at Basel airport with his arm completely bandaged. “I am not fan, but it was inevitable,” he said. Djokovic’s body, that temple to which he has dedicated so much care since he surrendered to the holistic movement, had not suffered any notable damage apart from the mishap to his arm. However, in the case of long-term professionals like him, meniscus injury usually responds to progressive degeneration. The Swiss Federer did not manage to avoid the intervention – in 2016, when he was 34 years old – when he injured his knee while bathing his twins, and the Frenchman Jo-Wilfred Tsonga had to remain out of work for seven months – when he was already in his thirties. — after also undergoing surgery.
14 years younger
But perhaps the Serbian can draw on the extraordinary experience of Taylor Fritz. The American, today 26 years old and 12th in ranking, suffered a similar misfortune in 2021, when he damaged the meniscus in his right knee when he fell on the clay and had to leave the Roland Garros court in a wheelchair, in the second round. Like Djokovic against Cerúndolo, he was able to finish the match, but in his case he lost it. A few days later he underwent surgery, and three weeks later he was already playing (and winning a couple of matches) on the grass at Wimbledon. Now, Fritz was then 23 years old, 14 years younger than what the Balkan’s DNI reflects today; who, on the other hand, has always displayed a gifted physical condition.
“I had surgery with only 20 days left before the tournament, and they told me that the recovery period would be four to six weeks. I am sure that this is the fastest that a professional athlete has returned from an operation, within a modality that requires changes of direction; Maybe someone has done it in golf, but it is not the same,” he transmitted then. “Apparently, it would be enough to cut a small part, and the rest would not have to be touched at all because the meniscus was intact. He told me that, to compete, I didn’t need everything to be 100%, just most of it. I got a little scared, I thought that if a part was damaged, maybe it would be best to repair it. So when I woke up, the first thing I did was ask him, ‘Did you repair it or cut it?’ The answer was clear: ‘he cut it’. And immediately afterwards, I started thinking about everything I needed to do to get to Wimbledon. I am very stubborn and I was very determined. Every day, when I did my three or four hours of physiotherapy, I thought: ‘Wimbledon, Wimbledon, Wimbledon.’ “I never got discouraged.”
And Djokovic is in those, although the focus of the world number two – automatically ousted by the Italian Jannik Sinner – seems not to be in London, but again in the Bois de Boulogne. Nole seems to want to repeat his destination: from Paris to Paris.
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