Experts have cast doubt on Novak Djokovic’s claim that he was “poisoned” by the food he ate in hotel immigration detention during his Australian Open visa saga, suggesting it is possible but unlikely.
Interviews with the former world number one ahead of the 2025 Australian Open have reopened public debate about the chain of events in 2022, with Australian tennis star Nick Kyrgios saying his home country had “treated [Djokovic] like shit” by cancelling his visa in 2022.
The Serbian 24-time grand slam winner had his visa cancelled at first on the basis that he did not have a valid exemption to enter Australia while unvaccinated, and then personally cancelled by the then immigration minister, Alex Hawke, because his unvaccinated status could undermine social cohesion.
Djokovic was detained in the Park hotel in Melbourne for five days before he left Australia after an unsuccessful appeal to the full federal court.
Djokovic told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper this week that he still had trauma from his experiences three years ago and felt stress arriving at the city’s airport.
“I realised that in that hotel in Melbourne I was fed with some food that poisoned me,” Djokovic told GQ magazine, in an interview released on Thursday.
“I had some discoveries when I came back to Serbia. I never told this to anybody publicly, but discoveries that I was, I had a really high level of heavy metal. Heavy metal. I had the lead, very high level of lead and mercury.”
The Department of Home Affairs declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.
Commenting generally rather than on the specifics of Djokovic’s case, Dr Barbara Cardoso, a nutritional biochemist at Monash University, said Australians had “relatively low exposure to lead and mercury” due to measures including the phasing out of lead in paint, petrol and plumbing.
“Mercury can be present in food, but the food with the highest mercury concentration are fish and shellfish.”
“The concentration in fish and shellfish found in Australia is relatively low,” Cardoso said. “It requires time for that mercury to accumulate in the body to cause poisoning.
“The food that people … who live in Melbourne and consume locally that may have been harvested here or sold at local grocery stores is unlikely to cause a poisoning.”
Dr Catharine Fleming, senior lecturer in public health at Western Sydney University, said it was “hard to show causation between [Djokovic’s] acquisition of the heavy metal poisoning and the food consumed without any clinical test results”.
“However, we did complete a study during the Covid pandemic focused on the foods available in quarantine specifically for children and their families and found this to be incredibly poorly done, with ad hoc food provision provided of poor quality.”
The Park hotel is used as an alternative place of detention for non-citizens including asylum seekers, some of who reportedly complained that their food was infested with maggots.
Kyrgios said on Friday morning that, although he had not heard the Serbian’s latest accusation of poisoning, he believed Djokovic’s visa saga was not handled well.
“I haven’t spoken to him about that, I didn’t even know that,” he said.
“But yeah, I mean, we treated him like shit that’s for sure, we shouldn’t have done that.”
In November 2022, Guardian Australia revealed the newly elected Labor government had decided to lift a three-year ban that usually accompanies visa cancellation.
On Friday the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he had not seen Djokovic’s latest comments regarding the saga.
“I am not going to respond to comments that I haven’t seen,” Albanese told reporters in Perth. “I wish Mr Djokovic very well, all the best on the court over the period of the Australian Open.”
Speaking to media in Melbourne on Friday afternoon, Djokovic was pressed on his claim about the “poisoned” food.
“Look, the GQ article came out online yesterday, and I think it’s a February issue, so it’s coming out in print version,” he said.
“I’ve done that interview many months ago, so I would appreciate not talking more in detail about that, as I would like to focus on the tennis and why I’m here. If you want to see what I’ve said and get more info on that, you can always revert to the article.”
– With additional reporting by Jack Snape
