Publications
Partners
Sydney - Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios may have to improve their behaviour on and off the tennis court if they hope to represent Australia at the Rio Olympics.
Both players have been put on notice by Australian chef de mission Kitty Chiller, who described Tomic's behaviour at a tournament in Madrid this week as "appalling," after he deliberately gave up a match point - with the handle of his racket facing forward - and later said he didn't care because at the age of 23 he was already worth $10m.
"It goes against every… value that all the Olympians live by, it goes against everything that we've been trying to build in this team," she said. "I would not want to see any of our Olympic team members behave in that way."
Chiller said at the AOC's annual general meeting on Saturday that "there's a few athletes that are on watch and those two names are among them."
"Every athlete is under the microscope now," Chiller added.
She also said the AOC had been watching the ongoing behaviour of Kyrgios, who has regularly abused umpires, opponents and spectators.
Tennis Australia has until late June to nominate its team for Rio, with world No 21 Kyrgios and No 22 Tomic the country's highest-ranked players and best chance for a medal.
But Chiller stressed that Tennis Australia can only nominate players of "good standing" within their sport, while the AOC has the final say.
"It's their responsibility to determine whether it's appropriate to nominate them," she said. "If any athlete from any sport is nominated, we look at everything… including behaviour, including the disrepute clause. We have the ability to take that into consideration whether we proceed to select the nomination or not."
"Based on the last 48 hours, all I can comment on is that is not behaviour that I would want any team member in a team that I'm responsible for to exhibit."
