FOOT FAULT

The Australia Day weekend again proved, if it is at all necessary, that Australians love sport and we love winners. Even if we do throw the word ‘hero’ around too loosely. And we love underdogs. Hence the newfound love affair with born-again Aussie Jelena Dokic. Not only has she come home but she has conquered some of her demons –including her Svengali father – and she is winning. Round after improbable round at the Australian Open.

The Sunday Telegraph had her wrapped in an Australian flag and the massive headline We’re With You. And the paper proclaimed ‘She was an outcast, now Jelena has united a nation’ And the Sunday Herald Sun devoted an editorial to her and said ‘win or lose, she is the hero of her adopted country’.

Now, a lot of Australians – this one included – barracked for her on Sunday night as she battled into the Quarter Finals with a damaged ankle that would have sidelined most people.  And will be behind her tonight.

But there’s an undercurrent here that people don’t want to talk about. Because it again connects sport and drugs and the underbelly of crime. It is the elephant in the room.

The Sunday Herald Sun editorial appears under the headline Fair Go for Dokic. And it says ‘even now the young tennis star is the subject of wild rumours and allegations’.

They weren’t that wild. The paper’s stalemate bluntly put the story on Page One on Saturday. According to the Herald Sun Dokic allegedly owes drug trafficker John Giannarelli $60,000.  He’s now dead. Remember, Ben Cousins –that name again – was a pallbearer at his funeral. Part of his rehab I guess. Giannarelli’s family is chasing the debt.

The Australian newspaper’s top sportswriter has sprung to the young tennis player’s defence. Patrick Smith dismissively says ‘It has been reported, gleefully we suspect, that a dead convicted drug dealer was somehow chasing her from the grave for money he allegedly spent supporting Dokic when she was at her lowest.’ Overweight, depressed, and struggling to reach the net let alone hitting anything over it.

Giannarelli reportedly paid for Dokic and her Croatian boyfriend to live for months in a high rise Melbourne apartment. And paid for meals, massages, and a dietician. Why? With gangsters there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Was Tennis Australia aware of Dokic’s close association with a drug dealer  whom a judge said was a ‘purveyor of misery and death’ and a major player in Melbourne’s drug trade?  How did they meet? What was the quid pro quo?

Have they deigned to ask any questions? This may sound harsh but we ask the same questions about footballers and their criminal drug-dealing associates.

Why shouldn’t the same yardstick be applied to a female tennis player? Or would that spoil a good news fairy tale?

Tuesday, January 27 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009