What happens to professional sportspeople after they retire. Many make the transition easily like Ivan Lendl who walked away and has virtually nothing to do with tennis these days and is more interested in his daughter's golfing fortunes. Others still stay within tennis like captaining their Davis Cup teams or play on the Seniors tour and commentating as well.
Tennis doesn't have as many of its people go off the rails as say football for example, then again this is probably cause of the different nature of the most of its players. Tennis as much as I enjoy it, in heart is a conservative sport and it helps to come from a semi middle class background and requires a certain amount of money to start up, whereas football doesn't have that. Both of these sports have a huge global appeal and players can earn plenty of money, but the amount of footballers that go off the rails with drugs, gambling and all the other stuff seems to be a lot higher than tennis players and that might even be per capita.
Which brings to the subject of the blog Swedish legend Björn Borg who is selling his 5 Wimbledon trophies and the rumours came around that he is broke and has to do this to make ends meet. Borg was the reason Swedish tennis exists, through the second generation who were the golden generation. He made tennis accessible to more people and his game was influential long after he retired.
Borg earnt plenty of money though compared current earnings it's peanuts, and he was making plenty of money through exhibitions and with his sudden retirement, it left an empty void and he had a lot of problems. Yes, he problems with women (yes, they can be troublesome), had some bad business dealing and he overdosed on some barbiturates.
With his Björn Borg label doing quite well and he seemed to put his troubles behind him and he was at Båstad talking with Rafael Nadal and he has kept himself in very good shape physically. Here is the Borg response to those rumours about his status as being broke.
http://expressen.se/index.jsp?a=538879
That is the original article in Swedish and my translation below.
Björn Borg: I am not Broke at all
Björn Borg laughed at rumours about that he should be broke.
The tennis legend imagines what he can earn from selling the Wimbledon trophies he will give it to charity.
Yesterday, the news that Björn Borg will auction off his 5 Wimbledon cups in London on the 21st June created big headlines.
At the time he said in a press release. “I must secure savings in the long term for those closest to me”
It is ridiculous
The nasty rumour said that Borg is broke or needs money to pay for an eventual summons of 11million SEK. Something that the legend definitely denied
“It is ridiculous to hear from Sweden that I am selling the Wimbledon trophies to survive or save my family and my dearest. I can’t understand that people think I am broke, when I have new stores opening all the time” said Borg.
He is present for the time being in Dubai, together with wife Patricia and together with son Leo and both of Patricia’s children Kasper and Bianca.
According to Borg his personal economic status has never been stronger.
“My business has never been better”, he said in a short statement.
Why sell the Wimbledon trophies?
“I have won so much and have so many prizes. I can’t keep in order of them all and thought that this would be something that someone would like”.
Wimbledon is the biggest
“Wimbledon is the greatest you can win through tennis, but I have so many films and such about the memory. But nothing will take it backwards ”. The trophies which will be sold at the auction firm Bonhams they expect around 4,4 mil SEK and 2 signed Donnay racquets. What Björn Borg is going to do with the money isn’t clear, but it is not at all sure than he will heepit.
“The money that comes in I think I will give it to charity. But to which one I don’t know yet” completed Borg.
5 comments:
There was an interesting article on this subject in one of our daily newspapers today "The Daily Express" It has a slighly different perspective and I thought you might be interested. It says most of Borg's financial problems come from the collapse of his menswear business, which he opened in New York in 1989 with over $10 million of his own money, It's subsequent collapse led to a lot of his present financial problems according to this article.
The newspaper's veteran tennis correspondant Nigel Clarke befriended Bjorn back in the 1970's, and has this to say about him in the article:-
"I was devastated when I heard this news. He was the nicest bloke who has been badly abused and manipulated by people, and now he's almost bankrupt. He was too trusting and not acute enough in how he dealt with people, which you can't do when you're as successful as he was because there are always people out to rip you off. He could never resist women. As a player he was a genius, but now he will be remembered for being in the knakcer's yard and that is very sad. His probpem was that he retired too quicky at 26. He was like George Best - you can retire early, but then you have a lot of retirement. Bjorn was disillusioned with tennis and he went down avenues where he had no knowledge. He woud have been better advised to invest in property or take some affiliation role".
Thanks for that article Rosie, it's good to get a different perspective.
He did have a lot of time after tennis stopped and made some very bad choices.
You're welcome - I found it interesting to read and thought it would fit in well here. The article itself is extremely long - this is only psrt of t.
Just translated an article and it seems that the Swedish tennis Museum in Båstad is interested in the trophies and that is a good thing.
I don't think Borg is destitute as vagrancy isn't a problem in Sweden, and he is not a vagrant.
It makes perfect sense if the trophies went there, but I don't see it.
Yes - that would be a great solution. Borg was so important to Swedish tennis and it would be nice for future generations to remember him in this way. Hopefully they can sort something out at the Museum.
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