Bj\u00f6rn Borg, the five-time Wimbledon tennis champion, has said he is taking life \u201cday by day, year by year\u201d after his \u201cextremely aggressive\u201d prostate cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n
The former world no1, who won 11 grand slam titles before retiring aged 25, revealed the diagnosis in the final chapter of his autobiography, which will be published this week in the UK and next week in the US. The Swede is in remission, having had an operation in 2024, but described the diagnosis as \u201cdifficult psychologically\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to the doctor and he said this is really, really bad,\u201d Borg told BBC Breakfast. \u201cHe said you have these sleeping cancer cells [and] it\u2019s going to be a fight in the future. Every six months I go and test myself. I did my last test two weeks ago. It\u2019s a thing I have to live with.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his autobiography Borg writes about panic attacks and his drug use, which he says started in 1982. \u201cThe first time I tried cocaine,\u201d he says in the book, \u201cI got the same kind of rush I used to get from tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Borg describes being rushed to a Dutch hospital in the 1990s after overdosing on \u201calcohol, drugs, pills \u2013 my preferred ways of self-medication\u201d. He also writes about \u201cthe worst shame of all\u201d, which he says came when he looked up from a hospital bed to see his father after another overdose.<\/p>\n
In his book Borg describes his decision to retire at the age of 25 after losing the 1981 Wimbledon and US Open finals to his rival John McEnroe. \u201cAll I could think was how miserable my life had become,\u201d he writes. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bj\u00f6rn Borg, the five-time Wimbledon tennis champion, has said he is taking life \u201cday by day, year by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[13424,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-71398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-american-football","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}