Swedish tennis legend Bjorn Borg, winner of 11 Grand Slam titles, has opened up in his autobiography ‘Heartbeats: A Memoir’, co-written with his wife Patricia. If in the final chapter he revealed the moment when he was diagnosed with an “extremely aggressive” prostate cancer, his memoirs, published this week, also include his relationship with drugs and how he almost died on two occasions.
The first was in Milan in February 1989, when Loredana, his second wife, found him unconscious and took him to hospital, where he had his stomach pumped. “The fact that I’m still alive is thanks to her,” he writes.
The second was a few years later, when he collapsed from a heart attack on a bridge in the Netherlands. His autobiography begins precisely on that bridge. He tells how his heart stopped and how lucky he was that there were people nearby who saved his life.
Borg: his early retirement from tennis triggered everything
Borg reveals he lost control of his life after retiring from tennis at 25. “I had no plan. Today, people have a guide. I was lost in the world. There were drugs, there were pills, alcohol, to escape from reality,” he says.
I started with drugs, pills or alcohol; it was a way to escape from life
In the book, she recounts how the first near-death episode in Milan was masked as an adverse reaction to sleeping pills she had taken to relieve stomach pain after eating at a restaurant in Milan. In an interview with The Times, she claims that if she is now telling all this, it is not for money. “I felt like I was carrying a huge backpack. I needed to get rid of it. I wanted to tell people. A lot of people see me in one way, through tennis. But they don’t really know what happened to me as a person, what can happen to a person. That’s why I wanted to tell people about it, and I feel very good about publishing this book, because I feel relieved. Now is a good time to tell it. I don’t think I was ready in the 90s. I had some relapses, but not as bad as in the 80s,” she admits
His first contact with cocaine
Borg acknowledges that it was a mistake to leave tennis so early and, above all, to get away from the tennis people around him. “I had no plan. I started with drugs, pills or alcohol. It was a way to escape from life,” he admits.
The six-time Roland Garros and five-time Wimbledon winner can detail when he first tried cocaine. It was in the summer of 1982 in New York. “There were always parties in Manhattan. So I went to one of them. I’m not playing tennis anymore and I can try cocaine.” The euphoria he felt, he claims, was like when he played tennis.
The Swedish former tennis player, who has been drug-free for two and a half decades, also tells of the process he went through after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, which is now in remission. “The doctor says I still have cancer cells in my body, but right now they’re dormant. They could be for years.”
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