Croatia's retired tennis great Goran Ivanisevic tests positive for Covid-19

Dino Stanin/PIXSELL

Retired Croatian tennis player Goran Ivanisevic announced on Friday that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus, only days after several other players were found to be infected at a regional exhibition tournament played in Serbia's capital Belgrade and Croatia's seaside town of Zadar.

The 48-year-old Ivanisevic, whose storied career includes carrying Croatia’s flag at the opening of the nation’s first ever Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona, and the hyper-dramatic winning of the 2001 Wimbledon men’s singles title, retired from active playing in 2004.

In June last year, he was hired to coach current world’s no. 1, Novak Djokovic of Serbia, with whom he attended matches of the Adria Tour exhibition tournament in Belgrade and Zadar, organised just as countries in the region started rolling back coronavirus restrictions and travel bans.

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On Tuesday, Djokovic announced that him and his wife Jelena had tested positive for Covid-19, after three other players – Croatian Borna Coric, Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, and Serbian Viktor Troicki – were found to be infected, along with at least two coaches.

Following the outbreak, the tournament’s remaining matches, scheduled to be played in Bosnia’s cities of Banja Luka and Sarajevo, have been cancelled.

The high-profile cases come amid a fresh surge in coronavirus cases across the region, with Croatia reporting 95 new cases on Thursday, its highest daily count in nearly three months. Serbia and Bosnia have each reported three-digit spikes in new cases recently.