Nick Kyrgios slammed for Covid

Nick Kyrgios rallies during training in Australia

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Nick Kyrgios has once again sparked controversy by criticising Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic on social media. The controversial tennis star took aim at his home country’s government, claiming that the nation has been “behind” in its response to the situation and bemoaning restrictive measures around international travel brought in to stop the spread to the virus.

Kyrgios was responding to a tweet from airline firm Qantas, which was announcing that flights from Sydney to Los Angeles and London would be taking off from November 1.

It comes as New South Wales, the state in which Sydney is situated, becomes the first to allow fully vaccinated travellers from overseas to enter without quarantine from that date.

“We need to rejoin the world. We can’t live here in a hermit kingdom. We’ve got to open up,” New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said.

Kyrgios appears to share that same opinion, but couldn’t resist taking a dig at the national government while making his point when quote Tweeting the news.

“Thanks guys!” he wrote. “Australia has been behind for the past year. Freedom has nothing to do with Covid.”

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The statement drew criticism from some followers, many of whom posted GIFs showing their exasperation at the Tweet.

“Travel and the spread of an airborne virus are pretty heavily connected,” one commenter pointed out.

Another suggested the 26-year-old has “nothing upstairs”.

And a third advised him to focus on reviving his ailing tennis career, telling him to “train hard and win some real tournaments”.

Kyrgios is in danger of slipping outside the top 100 in the ATP men’s rankings, and currently sits 97th.

The Australian has failed to live up to the talent he showed earlier in his career, and has fallen a long way from his career-high ranking of 13th five years ago.

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He lost each of his last five singles matches, and ended his 2021 season after losing to Stefanos Tsitsipas at the Laver Cup and being defeated by the Greek again in the doubles, alongside American John Isner.

While Kyrgios has reached the quarter-finals at Grand Slam’s in Australia and at Wimbledon in the past, he is most known in the tennis world for his more controversial antics.

He set an ATP record for the biggest fine ever handed out after a string of incidents at the Cincinnati Masters in 2019, when he repeatedly hurled verbal abuse and spat at an umpire as well as smashing two rackets in frustration.

And earlier this month, police had to intervene to separate the Australian and his girlfriend Chiara Passari while they were quarantining together in an Adelaide hotel.

Despite only being 26, Kyrgios has said he wants to retire at the age of 28, admitting he “definitely doesn’t love this sport” as much as the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic do.

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