Victoria Azarenka defends Novak Djokovic amid faking injury claims

Victoria Azarenka has come out in defence of Novak Djokovic after the Serbian was accused of dramatizing the extent of his hamstring injury. Azarenka said that she had sympathy for the way Djokovic was being treated and that players should not be treated as ‘villains’.
Citing her own experience from the 2013 Australian Open semi-final where she had to take a nine-minute timeout due to a panic attack she was going through, Azarenka said that the blowback afterwards was the worst thing she went through in her career.
“It was one of the worst things I have ever gone through in my professional career, the way I was treated after that moment, the way I had to explain myself until 10.30pm at night because people didn’t want to believe me,” she told reporters.
“There is sometimes, like, I don’t know, incredible desire for a villain and a hero story that has to be written,” said Azarenka. But we’re not villains, we’re not heroes, we are regular human beings that go through so many, many things,” said Azarenka, who is now back in the Australian Open semi-final since 2013.
Djokovic has taken medical timeouts in his second-round match against Enzo Couacaud and against Grigor Dimitrov in his third round win.
He later spoke to the Serbian media and reportedly said, “I leave the doubt to those people – let them doubt.” He then added, “Only my injuries are questioned. When some other players are injured, then they are the victims, but when it is me, I am faking it.”
Amid the discussion on the extent of Djokovic’s injuries and how he is portrayed as a ‘villain’, American World No 9 Taylor Fritz said that most tennis players are constantly injured and it’s a matter of the degree of injury that they carry with them.

“I don’t think people fake injuries, I do think sometimes players stretch the severity of the injury because it depressurises them and helps them play better,” he added.