Damir Dzumhur, withdrawn from Roland-Garros qualifications after his coach tested positive for the coronavirus, cries out injustice and announces that he will attack the tournament in civil matters.
Roland-Garros has only just begun that a great controversy has disturbed the Parisian Grand Slam. Among the players excluded from the qualifying tournament due to contamination with Covid-19, the Bosnian Damir Dzumhur cannot digest. According to him, the test of his coach Petar Popovic was a false positive, which should not have resulted in his withdrawal from the tournament.
Popovic’s strange test, “at the limit”
This Sunday, Damir Dzumhur announced on his Instagram account that he was one of the excluded players, immediately questioning the credibility of his trainer’s famous test: “He did not have the chance to do a second test and we are sure that it was a false positive because my trainer has antibodies. I am devastated. “
However, Popovic would have passed about twenty tests in recent weeks and Dzumhur had explained in the columns of The team that his test was “at the limit”, which is well explained according to the Bosnian by the presence of antibodies in his coach. Before promising to attack the tournament if a new test passed on Monday turns out to be negative.
A second negative test this Monday
This Tuesday, the 114th player in the world therefore published on his Instagram account the result of the new test passed by his coach on Monday and it was not missed: it is negative.
As announced, he will attack Roland-Garros in civil, judging therefore to have been excluded from qualifying wrongly. “It’s a scandal and a huge frustration,” Popovic told The team. I’m sure we’ll win in court, but it hurts a lot. They will pay dearly. It is driving me crazy!”
“The rules are not the same for everyone”
In addition, Dzumhur is also certain that such a situation would not have given a similar outcome for a very great player of the circuit: “It is much easier to do that to a lower ranked player. It is unfair. We do not all have the same rights and the rules are not the same for everyone, “he complained to L’Equipe on Monday.
In addition to the impossibility of competing for his chances and trying to integrate the big table of Roland-Garros for the seventh time in a row, Damir Dzumhur will sit on his prize-money. If he had managed to cross the three qualifying rounds, he would have received 60,000 euros, for example. Even a defeat in the first round of qualifying would have earned him a nice tip of 10,000 euros.
