‘I tried to escape with drugs, pills and alcohol’: Björn Borg on his misery and mayhem after quitting tennis
The sporting superstar walked away from success and adulation at 26 – much to everyone’s bemusement. He opens up about his secret life and the depression, cocaine, overdoses and aggressive cancer that almost killed him
‘I’m a person who doesn’t say very much,” Björn Borg says with a wry smile. Which may be the understatement of the century. Borg, the greatest tennis player of his day, has spent 42 years saying nothing since he announced his retirement at the age of 26.
When he broke that news in 1983, it was one of the biggest shocks in the history of sport. Not simply because he was at his peak, but also because he was the rock star tennis player – beautiful, mysterious and followed by a flock of teenybopper fans. When Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz triumphed in the US Open earlier this month, aged 22, he became the second youngest player to have won six major tournaments. Borg beat him by four months.