PARIS (AP) – A tennis coach who tested negative for a coronavirus test for the French Open, causing his player to be withdrawn from the Grand Slam run-up, lashed out at organizers Tuesday for the way who handled the case.
Damir Dzumhur, a Bosnian who made it to the top 30 in the world and now ranks 114th, traveled to Paris for the qualifying tournament. But his coach, Petar Popovic, tested negative last weekend before the tournament began. Dzumhur’s test came back negative, but he was excluded because they shared a room, the coach told the Associated Press in a phone interview from his native Serbia.
Popovic said the organizers informed him on Saturday of the positive result. He specified that a tournament doctor told him that his result was “at the limit.” As a result, Dzumhur was not included in the chart because of contact, he said.
The preliminary tournament started on Monday. The Grand Slam clay main draw activity will get underway on Sunday.
Popovic said he begged for a second test, convinced the first was wrong, in part because he contracted the virus two months ago. He also doubted the result from a blood test last month that found antibodies to COVID-19, suggesting some degree of protection against infection.
“Everything happened so fast. Really. No discussion or anything, ”he said. “The world came over me and, above all, Damir.”
“They did not give us the opportunity to prove our innocence and they have made a scandalous mistake,” he said. “Its inhuman”.
The organizers of the tournament defended their sanitary protocol, developed in tune with the government’s guidelines.
“Those are our rules,” they said in a brief statement.
The French sports daily L’Equipe quoted the doctor of the French tennis federation, Bernard Montalván, who said that the samples that test positive are analyzed again to confirm the result, for which the coach “was subjected to two tests”:
“If a coach sleeps in the same room as his player, he knows that if he tests positive, it is a case of contact,” Montalván said. “That is why it is stated in the protocol that sharing a room is not recommended.”
Popovic said tournaments should offer a new test in situations like his.
“If his name was Rafael Nadal, without a doubt they would take a second test, even a third, to confirm that it is not a false positive,” he said.
So far, Roland Garros has reported six player casualties in the qualifying phase due to the virus, three who tested positive and three who were in close contact with a coach who tested positive. Names were not released.
