Novak Djokovic has opened up on the terrifying moment he fled for his life as a child while NATO bombs fell on Belgrade.
The 24-time Grand Slam champion was approaching his 12th birthday when Yugoslavia was subjected to NATO air strikes in 1999 during the Kosovo conflict.
Djokovic and his family were living in the Serbian capital at the time, with the tennis legend now providing a harrowing account of one particular night in a new documentary about his life and career.
The 39-year-old recalled desperately trying to reach a shelter during the early hours as frightened residents attempted to escape the bombing.
“One of those first nights of the bombing, our building did not have a shelter. So we had to go to another building,” Djokovic said.
“We were running towards that other building. It’s a horrifying sight because this is 2-3am. It was dark. You see people running around, panicking.
“They don’t know where to go, trying to save their lives.
“I tripped and I fell. I saw my family running 40, 50 feet in front of me. And I tried to scream, ‘help me, help me’.
Novak Djokovic has opened up on the terrifying moment he fled for his life as a child while NATO bombs fell on Belgrade
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“They didn’t hear me, they kept running. I turned around and I looked at our building.
“And I saw a plane dropping two bombs into a nearby hospital. Standing in the rain and darkness…”
Djokovic’s experiences are revisited in the new Prime Video documentary Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter, released ahead of the US Open.
His brother Marko also recalled the fear their family experienced during the bombing campaign.
Novak Djokovic’s brother, Marko Djokovic, also speaks on the documentary
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“At the beginning, it was a horror story,” he said.
“You cannot imagine as a little kid that something like that can happen.”
Later in 1999, Djokovic left Serbia to continue his development at Niki Pilic’s tennis academy in Munich.
But financing the career of a promising young player placed enormous pressure on a family already living through severe economic hardship.
Djokovic claims his father was forced to borrow money from “criminals” to keep his son’s ambitions alive.
“Most of the time you borrowed money from very wrong people, unfortunately, that were criminals,” Djokovic said.
“So all of the reserves that we had he was giving to pay off the debt.”
Djokovic recalled his father eventually sitting the family down and revealing they had just 10 Deutschmarks remaining.
Novak Djokovic has 24 Grand Slam titles to his name
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GETTYHe nevertheless promised to continue funding his son’s career on the condition that Djokovic dedicated himself completely to tennis.
“I had to become more serious, more stern, more stable, more of a man rather than a boy,” Djokovic said.
“I had to be kind of a parent at 13 years old. I wasn’t able anymore to express my feelings. And I was a kid.”
Tennis subsequently became what Djokovic describes as his “sanctuary”.
He also believes those experiences helped develop the mentality which would eventually propel him to 24 major titles and Olympic gold.
Djokovic describes that characteristic using the Serbian word “inat”, referring to a sense of defiance and stubbornness when confronted with adversity.
“When people doubt you, when everyone is basically against you, that’s when you use that ‘inat’, that force of stubbornness to prove everybody wrong,” he explained.
