The incredible case of Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, who is trying in every way possible to take part in the Australian Open despite not having received any doses of the anti-Covid vaccine, could push several sports organizations to implement a new rule in order to avoid similar circumstances. The concrete possibility, therefore, is that in order to regularly take part in the events, the competitors and team staff are subject to mandatory vaccination, under penalty of exclusion from competitions. A scenario which could also happen in Formula 1, with just a few months ahead the start of the 2022 season.
Precisely Australia – which should host the third Grand Prix of the next championship and is currently at the center of the controversial Novak Djokovic affair – is requiring all athletes to be fully vaccinated in order to access the country’s borders. The Victorian state will welcome Formula 1 for the first time in two years, thus interrupting a period without any international motorsport competition – including MotoGP – on its territory, precisely because of the pandemic emergency. The issue of vaccinations in Formula 1 was also recently addressed by Bruno Famin, Director of Operations of the FIA, who announced the possibility of making the vaccine mandatory in the top racing series.
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“We know that in some places, in some countries, and in some events, compulsory vaccination is moving forward – he admitted to the DPA news agency – it is something that we could consider, but nothing has been decided at the moment”. Another comment on this delicate situation also came from the Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, who focused more on the effects of the pandemic on the lives of children, unable to go to school or carry out normal activities due to this emergency: “These children have of course been robbed of very important years,” the Austrian told FAZ newspaper – “It was a silent suffering for them, and we will only be able to better assess the social and emotional consequences in many years. We’re not out of it yet, but I hope that these scars will heal too” – he explained.
