Fabrice Santoro (in pic.) on Thursday laughed off a suggestion that world number one Novak Djokovic deliberately lost to him at the Paris Masters in 2007.
The former French player spoke out after an Italian newspaper said Djokovic could have thrown the second round match 6-3, 6-2.
“I was never the best player in the world but I'd beaten 19 of the 23 best players in the world, and a week before I'd beaten American Andy Roddick, who was world number five,” Santoro, who was ranked 39 at the time, told BeIN Sports television.
Whilst Djokovic “had undoubtedly not played the match of his life”, Santoro refuted the suggestion that the Serbian had been involved in match-fixing. “One has to be careful, you can't just write any old thing, you have to have proof,” Santoro, now a commentator, said. Djokovic on Wednesday called the corruption claim “absurd”.
The spectre of match-fixing overshadowed the Australian Open after the BBC and BuzzFeed News claimed that 16 top players had repeatedly been suspected of involvement in fixed matches but never faced action. Tennis authorities have also strongly denied suggestions that evidence of corruption has been deliberately suppressed.
Meanwhile, Andre Agassi says match-fixing in tennis “never even made my radar” while he was on tour. The eight-time Grand Slam title winner told The Associated Press that he never had any brush with the sort of corruption that was alleged in media reports.
“I worry about that being a problem in any sport, because I think it poses an existential threat to the very fabric of what sports is about,” Agassi said. “I think every sport needs to take that incredibly seriously.”
“In 21 years I played professionally, I can say, either based on my naiveté or my focus on trying to be the best in the world, that it never made my radar at any stage in those 21 years,” Agassi said. “So I don't know if I was unreachable, untouchable or just purely in my own world, but it never even made my radar, whatsoever.”