Yahoo Finance Australian Open players in quarantine could be released early from hotel lockdowns
Quarantined Australian Open players could be released early from their hotel lockdowns in order to practice ahead of the tournament.
Government officials had previously reacted angrily to player complaints and demands from world no1 Novak Djokovic to ease the 14-day quarantine for those on board a plane with a passenger testing positive for Covid-19.
But despite a further three cases among the international arrivals into Australia, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday that some of the quarantined players – believed to be as many as 72 – might not have to see out their full two weeks inside the four walls of their hotel rooms.
He said: “If you’ve got, say, 30 people who are deemed a close contact because they’ve been on a plane with a case, and the case is no longer an active case but a historic shedding, well that would release those people from that hard lockdown.”
Djokovic had written to tournament director Craig Tiley asking him to rehouse quarantined players in private houses with tennis courts as well as reduce their period of quarantine, which was rebuffed by Andrews yesterday.
But Tiley defended Djokovic, saying: “In the case of Novak, he wrote a note, these weren’t demands, they were suggestions. But he, too, understands what two weeks of lockdown means… every player coming down knew if they were going to be close contacts or test positive that these were going to be the conditions.”
Some players had raised fears of the injury risk of going straight into the tournament, with some suggestion that matches in the men’s singles could be cut to a best-of-three sets rather than the typical best of five. But Tiley dismissed the suggestion.
He said: “We’re a Grand Slam. Right now, three out of five sets for the men and two out of three sets for the women is the position we plan on sticking too.”
And despite criticism from the players, he added: “These are high-performing athletes and it is hard to keep a high-performing athlete in a room. This is the contribution that they had to make in order to get the privilege of when they do come out to compete for $80million (£45m).
“There was going to be an expectation to have several positive cases. But now we’re in a position where they’re in lockdown, designed to protect the community.”
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