Djokovic Admits False Statement on Australia Travel Document

MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked men’s tennis player, acknowledged on Wednesday that a travel document he presented to Australian border officials last week contained false information, as the country’s authorities continued to investigate whether he should be deported.

Mr. Djokovic also said that he had participated in an interview and a photo shoot last month in his native Serbia even after testing positive for the coronavirus, in an apparent breach of the country’s rules for infected people. Australian officials have said they are looking into whether Mr. Djokovic, who is unvaccinated, poses a risk to public health.

The tennis star’s comments came in a statement he released on social media that he said was intended to “clarify misinformation” about the weeks before he arrived in Melbourne for the Australian Open. He was detained for days by Australian border officials before being ordered released on Monday by a federal judge.

But Mr. Djokovic’s statement did not fully resolve a range of questions that have swirled over his quest to remain in Australia and seek a record 21st Grand Slam title. Among them are exactly when he learned of the positive test result and how his travel documents came to falsely assert that he had not traveled internationally in the 14 days before his arrival in Australia.

The statement posted on Instagram, which Mr. Djokovic said would be his last remarks about his ordeal in Australia, was released as the country’s immigration minister said he was still considering whether to exercise his personal powers to cancel the player’s visa again. Immigration officials were also investigating the discrepancies in the paperwork Mr. Djokovic presented as he tried to enter Australia last week with an exemption from a requirement for Covid-19 vaccinations.

Australian tennis officials granted that exemption on the basis of what Mr. Djokovic had said was a Covid infection he had in mid-December. He had come under criticism over images on social media showing him at events at the same time he was supposedly infected with the coronavirus.

Mr. Djokovic said on Wednesday that he had taken a P.C.R. test on Dec. 16 after some people at a basketball game he had attended two days earlier tested positive for the coronavirus. Despite having no symptoms, he also took a rapid antigen test “out of an abundance of caution,” he said, and it came back negative.

On Dec. 17, he said, as he was awaiting his P.C.R. result, he attended a tennis event in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, where he presented awards to children. He said that he took another rapid antigen test before attending that event, which came back negative, and that his P.C.R. test did not come back positive until after it had finished.

On Dec. 18, he went ahead with an interview and a photo shoot with the French sports newspaper L’Equipe “to fulfill a longstanding commitment,” he said.

“I felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the L’Equipe interview as I didn’t want to let the journalist down, but did ensure I socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was taken,” Mr. Djokovic said.

“While I went home after the…