Björn Borg on cancer, drug abuse and doping in tennis

Björn Borg is one of the big names in tennis. Eleven Grand Slam titles are available for him, five of them victories in Wimbledon alone. For 109 weeks, Borg was in first place in the world rankings before he ended his career at the age of 26 in 1983. In the following years he tried several times – but without success.

His autobiography “Heartbeats” was published on September 18. On this occasion, the now 69-year-old spoke to the Swedish newspaper, the British and the Swedish broadcaster SVT. According to the broadcaster, it was Borg’s first television interview in 30 years.

In it, the tennis star spoke publicly about his cancer for the first time. He was diagnosed with an “extremely aggressive” prostate cancer, said Borg. After an operation, he is better, but he had to be examined regularly. “The problem is that you have many sleeping cancer cells in your body. They can sleep in the body for many years and not wake up, but they can do it at some point.”

In the interview, Borg also did not divide his drug abuse. After the end of his career, he started consuming cocaine in Milan when he was married to the Italian singer Loredana Bertè. “I regret it so much,” he says today. “There were always drugs around me and I had no friends. It was not a good time. Drugs, pills and too much alcohol destroy life. Don’t let this crap.”

Borg, as he had visited a show tournament in the Netherlands with his father in the 1990s. One evening he took cocaine and the next day collapsed on the way to the arena in front of his father’s eyes and woke up in the hospital. “The doctor said I didn’t survive if I had come a little later.” Until then, his father knew nothing about his drug use. “That my father stood in front of me … I was ashamed like a dog. I have never been so ashamed in my life.”

At the same time, Borg also reproached his sport: there is doping in tennis, he claimed in. He spoke about that. “He released his fitness trainer, and when everything had calmed down, he set him again. I think that’s very strange.”

Even during his active time, there had already been doping in tennis. “I know that some players were doped in my time. I don’t want to give names, but I know that there was doping in my time,” said Borg. However, he himself never participated.

In the meantime, he continues, Borg continues, but still fights with the consequences of drug addiction. He was born in the zodiac sign Zwilling. “So I’m two people,” said Borg. It was like someone on his shoulder who sometimes wanted to pull him deep into the dirt. “All the demons I had. There are so many demons and it is difficult to deal with them.”

A great support in his life is his wife Patricia, whom he married in 2002 and who is also a co-author of his biography. He regarded her as a living guardian angel, as he explained to the newspaper “Dagen’s Nyheter”. She stopped him and saved his life when he was once again on the wrong way. “When I met Patricia, I immediately felt that she was a serious woman. That was the big difference to my earlier relationships. It was simply said: ‘Turn yourself together!'”

Borg now has to do without tennis. He is doing sports, Borg told the “Dagen’s Nyheter”. He only plays tennis. His right shoulder and his knees are broken. “If I played tennis for an hour, I couldn’t walk for two weeks.” Instead, he climbed his home trainer in his apartment or walk around his sofa every day. The bottom of his living room now even has traces of its rounds. “So I can think and process things in my life and think about what I do and what I shouldn’t do.”