At Roland Garros,
It was a long break, a book we had stopped reading, left on a shelf with the certainty of reopening it with the dog-eared page, days, weeks, months later, whatever. It took Alexander Zverev exactly a year to resume his story where it left off, in the semi-finals of Roland-Garros. We’ll spare you the details, the rehearsed: the foot stuck in the ground, the howl of pain, the crutches and the tears in the face of the dream gone. The galley, too, to return to a level of pretender to win, Porte d’Auteuil. But, surprisingly, Sascha’s return to Paris will not have revolved so much around his tearful story as about another major event of the Zverev 2022 vintage.
In early August of the same year, the German revealed that he had type 1 diabetes since the age of 3, when he launched his foundation with his brother Mischa. An initiative whose goal is “to help children with type 1 diabetes and help people prevent possible type 2 diabetes by leading a healthy and active life. “The opportunity to recall some traumatic childhood memories. “I had a lot of bad experiences when I was little, then told the 27th in the world. Sometimes I was invited to school friends’ birthday parties and their parents wouldn’t let me eat cake. They told me: “you have the disease of sugar, you are not allowed to eat it”. I was excluded. »
The Zverev controversy
The great Alexander also has his little worries to manage vis-à-vis his illness since the start of the fortnight. So much so that the 2023 Roland-Garros tournament has become, in spite of itself, an excellent awareness campaign on the issue of diabetes in professional sport around the Zverev-Tiafoe match, in the 3rd round. Because if the ATP was briefed on the use of the insulin pen by the former world number 2 during side changes, it would seem that the instructions were not passed on to all the officials of the Parisian tournament.
“On the ATP circuit, I do that on the bench but here, they don’t allow me to do it, explained Zverev at a press conference. Since I’m not allowed to do that on the court, I have to go out every time. “Problem, the players are now only entitled to one bathroom break during a match (two in the event of the 5th set), a rule clearly incompatible with the German’s insulin needs, who tried to reason with the officials . “Guys, I might need to step off the court four or five times. Just tell me what you want me to do but don’t make me go back and forth over and over again. »
Diabetes and high-level sport, explanations
To understand Zverev’s habits related to his disease, it is necessary to quickly explain what diabetes is. Short SVT lesson with the WHO: “It is a chronic disease that appears when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or when the body does not use the insulin it produces correctly. Insulin is a hormone that regulates the concentration of sugar in the blood. According to a report from the University of Liège on diabetes and the practice of high-level sport, “the risk of hypoglycaemia is present during and after long exercises of medium intensity, of the aerobic type, and hyperglycaemia during repetitive, short, high-intensity exercises. Tennis is more in the 2nd category.
Add to this that stress, extremely present in pro athletes, is a hyperglycemic factor in many of them. American JC Aragone, also a type 1 diabetic, testified to The Team poison that the nerves can constitute for a sick athlete. “I’ve cramped before because of that: when you’re too high, your body tries to evacuate the sugar from your body through the urine, so you get dehydrated, your muscles lack water and the cramps happen. The blood pressure is catastrophic. It happened to me during my first qualifying round at the US Open in 2017, against Cecchinato. Because of my nervousness, my blood sugar was so high that my whole body cramped. Hence the usefulness of optimal control of blood sugar. End of parenthesis.
A total error in the apprehension of the disease
The Zverev case does not end there. The same evening, while preparing for an injection, faces resistance from a supervisor clearly unaware of his diabetes. “He panicked when I gave my injection. He told me that I had to call a doctor if I had to inject anything. But it didn’t make sense since the doctor had no idea how much insulin I needed to inject. »
Anyone who comes into close contact with the disease knows that this is a big mistake: apart from the endocrinologist/diabetologist in charge of the patient, no one is better placed than the latter to act. “What is complicated with diabetes is that the patient becomes an expert in his own disease, confirms Alizée Agier, double world champion in karate and suffering from type 1 diabetes since the age of 19. When I saw that they would have liked a doctor to do the injection for him, I said to myself “worst idea! Disaster”. »
In the next match, against Dimitrov, Zverev was able to count on the benevolence of referee Aurélie Tourte, present on the ATP circuit and aware of her situation, the Frenchwoman having not equated injection breaks with bathroom breaks. But, questioned at a press conference by German colleagues, he was indignant at having to hide to do so. “It’s disturbing: they seem to say that I do something weird when I inject my insulin […]. I asked them afterwards: ”Do you think that looks like someone doping on the court?”. »
Insulin is a WADA prohibited substance. But, like any diabetic person, the semi-finalist has a TUE (therapeutic use authorizations). For Alizée Agier, associating these vital injections with an act of doping is purely counterproductive from the point of view of the perception of the disease.
Diabetes affects millions of people, including children. What message are we sending by saying that it’s weird to inject insulin, when we have to do it every day at all times, whether on public transport, at home, the training room? »
Sascha will have peace until the end of the tournament
And it is all the more disturbing since the victim of this unfortunate amalgam revealed no later than last year that he had hidden his illness for a long time out of “shame”. To silence Zverev’s diabetes is also to deprive oneself of all the positive repercussions linked to identification with an athlete. The French karateka knows something about it for having attended a match by Sascha in the first week: “It was great! I watched her change sides. Because precisely, I was wondering about the management of his blood sugar, his injections, etc. I wanted to know, there were questions to which I did not have too many answers. For example, I could see that he checked his blood sugar at one point, because I spotted the device he does it with. »
During his most recent press conference, the double winner of the Masters claimed to have obtained peace until the end of the fortnight. “Then they will decide for Wimbledon. “Our requests to the organization of Roland-Garros remained unanswered, despite the apparent absence of a legal framework. “We have to take it as the right time to change things in the context of tennis, on this tournament in particular, ends Agier. And listen to the athlete. »