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Jelena Dokic has unfortunately been the recipient of online abuse hurled by trolls commenting on her body weight, among other things. Dokic is one of the lead presenters at the ongoing 2023 Australian Open and has been conducting post-match on-court interviews on the bigger courts.
After learning of some of the social media trolling that has been directed at Dokic over the past few days, Judy Murray has hit back hard at those hiding behind their devices and abusing the former Australian tennis star. Murray hailed Dokic for continuing to shine as a presenter and analyst, just as she did as a tennis player.
She also used the opportunity to highlight the prevalent sexism, particularly directed towards female presenters. Murray slammed those judging women by their looks rather than the quality of their work and further lamented their gender discrimination.
"Jelena Dokic was one of the world’s best tennis players and is an outstanding and entertaining pundit/presenter," Judy Murray wrote on Twitter. "Why are women judged so much on how they look instead of how good they are at their jobs? U don’t see this type of criticism aimed at male presenters."
Dokic highlighted the "disgusting" abuse she has received over the past two weeks, lamenting the lack of basic empathy on the part of her trolls. She further slammed them for fat-shaming her and also lacking kindness and the ability to be a good person. The former World No. 4 also thanked those who supported and encouraged her, vowing to continue fighting against such criticism.
"Disgusting. People should be so ashamed. The most common comment being ‘what happened to her, she is so big’? I will tell you what happened, I am finding a way and surviving and fighting," Jelena Dokic wrote on Instagram.
"And it really doesn’t matter what I am doing and what happened because size shouldn’t matter. Kindness and being a good person matters which those of you that abuse me and others are clearly not."
Jelena Dokic shares heartening moment with Novak Djokovic at Australian Open 2023
Jelena Dokic has also been praised for her thoroughly professional and entertaining interviews with some of the biggest tennis stars over the past 10 days at the 2023 Australian Open. One of those on-court interviews was with Novak Djokovic, who revealed to Dokic that he once looked up to her and was very happy to see her after a long time.
After Djokovic's third-round victory against Grigor Dimitrov on Saturday, Dokic reminisced about meeting the Serbian great for the first time back at the 2006 Australian Open and then again in 2008. She then praised Djokovic and he returned her compliments with some classy words for her.
"To return the compliments to you, I was looking up to you obviously, you played for Australia, but you come from our region so we speak the same language. You were a big star at that time and I was really happy to play with you so it is great to see you again," Djokovic said to Dokic.
Dokic, a former Wimbledon semifinalist in singles and French Open finalist in doubles, retired from tennis at the age of 31 back in 2014. Post retirement, she was also a tennis coach for a while, but has primarily worked as a commentator and presenter.
