40 years after tennis triumph: Becker about Wimbledon Coup: “Suddenly freedom was gone”

Boris Becker (57) not only looks back at his first Wimbledon triumph 40 years ago. With the huge euphoria and enormous expectations, he was not always well caught as a 17-year-old at the time. “The whole country hugged me. It was certainly meant nicely, but I was almost crushed and took my air to breathe,” said the tennis icon in the “Stern” interview: “I was always a freedom-loving person, and suddenly this freedom was gone.”

Becker won his first of a total of three titles at the classic lawn Wimbledon in July 1985 and thus triggered a tennis boom in Germany and a huge hype about himself. “People suddenly looked at me with different eyes, even my parents,” the native of Leimen recalled: “Boy, what did you do? That was their attitude. My parents knew me seventeen and a half years until then, but they didn’t know that I had this strength in me.”

Becker and the “survival”

This inner strength helped him during his professional career and later in difficult times. “I survived as a child prodigy. I have 17-year-old Boris Becker and everything that came afterwards. I have this characteristic: I survive,” he said: “You can expose me to Vietnam in the jungle-I find a way I survive. You can put me in prison-and I find a way I survive.”

With this attitude he also survived his prison sentence in a prison in London, which he had to serve because of incorrect information in the bankruptcy proceedings. During this time he learned who he could really rely on. “As you say it: In a severe crisis you are a mother soul. Yes, it was with me.”

Love declaration to wife

However, his current wife Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, with now he lives in Milan, had remained at his side. “This is remarkable because she could only be interested in me as a person because I had nothing else to offer,” said Becker: “I had never met such a woman before.”