Bjorn Borg Opens Up About Cocaine Addiction, Shame, and Prostate Cancer Battle in New Memoir

Swedish tennis icon Bjorn Borg has made a deeply personal revelation in his newly released autobiography Heartbeats: A Memoir, published on Thursday, disclosing his long-hidden battles with cocaine addiction and a recent prostate cancer diagnosis.The 69-year-old former world No.1, who dominated tennis in the 1970s and early 1980s, confessed that his first experience with cocaine in the early 1980s at New York’s legendary nightclub Studio 54 gave him “a rush as strong as what tennis had given me in the past.”Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!His darkest years, Borg recounts, came in the 1990s when he was living in Milan with then-wife, Italian singer Loredana Bertè. “We had bad influences, and… drugs and pills within reach. There, I was plunged into the deepest darkness,” Borg writes.The low point arrived in 1996, when Borg collapsed on a bridge in the Netherlands just before an exhibition tournament. “When I awoke in hospital, my father was standing next to me. He said nothing, it was so embarrassing. I was terribly ashamed,” he told Swedish talk show Skavlan.
In the memoir, Borg also reveals that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September 2023. “The risk of it coming back still exists, and it’s something I will have to live with… with the anxiety of not knowing if the cancer was caught in time,” he wrote, adding that he undergoes check-ups every six months.Despite his health challenges, Borg stressed that he exercises daily, though he admitted he has not “played tennis in six years.”The 11-time Grand Slam champion also touched on doping in modern tennis, expressing concern about junior players and questioning Jannik Sinner’s decision to rehire fitness coach Umberto Ferrara after the Italian’s brief suspension for a steroid violation.Borg, who retired shockingly at just 26 after conquering Wimbledon five times and the French Open six times, said his memoir is about confronting demons, shame, and survival.