Photo: Andymiah via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped. This adapted image is also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Plant-based tennis star Novak Djokovic has finally won Olympic gold at the age of 37, beating Carlos Alcaraz 7-6(3), 7-6(2) in Paris today to complete the career Golden Slam.
Djokovic becomes only the fifth player in history to win all four Grand Slams and an Olympic singles gold, joining Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams, the ATP reports. It's sweet revenge too. Alcaraz, who is 16 years younger, comprehensively beat him in the Wimbledon final only last month.
Olympic gold was the one major prize missing from his collection after a bronze in Beijing in 2008 and a string of near misses since. Afterwards he said:
I put my heart, my soul, my body, my family, my everything on the line to win Olympic gold at age 37. I finally did it.
Djokovic has eaten a plant-based diet for years, and he's been clear that it's about more than winning. Speaking at a press conference during the 2020 Australian Open, he said, as VegNews reported:
I'm very pleased to be plant-based and play at this level.
It's a lifestyle more than just a diet because you have ethical reasons as well, being conscious of what is happening in the animal world. The slaughtering of animals and farming and everything, that's obviously also a huge impact on climate change which maybe people don't talk about as much.
It's more than a performance reason for me, it's a lifestyle, it's something I'm really proud of.
He calls himself plant-based rather than vegan, and he was one of the executive producers of The Game Changers, the documentary that did more than any other to bust the myth that athletes need meat.
Winning one of the most gruelling tournaments in sport at 37, against a 21-year-old, says a lot about recovery. And that's exactly where plant-based athletes say they notice the biggest difference. The science backs them up: a 2017 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found plant protein builds muscle just as well as animal protein.
Last year we reported that plant-based Novak Djokovic won his 24th Grand Slam at 36. He joins a growing list of champions powered by plants, from vegan F1 driver Lewis Hamilton to Nate Diaz and Kendrick Farris, the only male US weightlifter at Rio. And at these Games, 60% of the food served to spectators is plant-based. The Game Changers became the best-selling documentary in iTunes history for a reason.
Congratulations Novak! No meat, no problem.