Dominic Thiem on doping: “I’m afraid of every drink”

On Tuesday, the 30-year-old former world number three drove with his brother and manager Moritz to the performance center of his sponsor Red Bull in Thalgau. There he wants to have his body, which is also ailing, completely checked out.

Austria’s tennis star revealed this and much more during a fancast on the US website Essentially Sports on the way there. In Salzburg, Thiem also wants to have his battered right knee examined more closely. “I’ve been having problems with it for over a year, but with the adrenaline and the pressure I’ve managed it quite well. But it’s a bit annoying,” admitted Thiem.

The Lichtenwörther native has a lot of fitness training and running ahead of him and will also spend a lot of the first few months of 2024 on the hard court. That’s why a good structure is very important. “I will try to be pain-free in the off-season,” said Thiem.

Vacation in Greece

He also spent time reading, his family and also the first parts of the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary on Netflix. Next week Thiem will be ready for the island, more precisely a small Greek island, where he will vacation for a week. “It’s 15 degrees there, there’s good air, the sea and good Greek food.”

Thiem also revealed that he has been meditating almost every day for some time. “There are so many distractions these days like telephones and TV. It helped me to do nothing at all for a while.” In the fancast, Thiem even had to talk about his behind in response to various comments on the Internet, but he was also able to laugh about it.

The big topic was sustainability. Thiem has stood for closeness to nature and nature conservation for some time. The recent big discussion about the many different tennis balls on the tour, as well as their declining quality, could perhaps be used, says Thiem, to create “balls from balls”.

From a sporting perspective, the Lower Austrian hopes that he can take his momentum at the end of the year into preparation for the season. “And then with full power to Australia. I hope I can play a consistent season. The second half of this year was much better, I want to play like this for a full year.”

When asked by a fan whether he believes he will ever be able to play as well as he did when he won his major title in New York in 2020, Thiem was optimistic: “Yes, I think so. I have my strokes and my power back. Now it’s possible “It’s about playing stable again and gaining self-confidence.”

In 2019, Thiem spoke out about doping in tennis and described his sport as clean. Does he still believe that, given that Simona Halep is currently banned for four years? “We are checked so often. I’m afraid of every drink I drink. We have blood and urine tests at six in the morning or ten in the evening, often twice a week. I believe that tennis is very clean. “