Care for tennis icon
Björn Borg on cancer diagnosis: “Looks very, very bad”
Updated on September 18, 2025Reading time: 2 min.
Björn Borg spoke in a TV interview about his cancer-and how it influences his everyday life today.
In a TV interview, tennis legend Björn Borg explained in detail how serious about his health. In the British program “BBC Breakfast”, the 69-year-old described his cancer-and how he lives with it today.
“I talked to the doctor and he said that it looks very, very bad,” said Borg in an interview with the BBC. The diagnosis: sleeping cancer cells that must continue to be monitored. An investigation was necessary every six months, the last one took place two weeks ago. “I have to live with that,” said Borg.
The eleven-time Grand Slam winner became known primarily with his calm way on the square and legendary duels with John Mcenroe. In his autobiography, which will be released on September 19, Borg spoke in detail about his illness for the first time. An operation last year led to the subscription of disease signs. Borg: “I take life every day, year after year.” The mental burdens from the diagnosis were a major challenge for him.
In another interview, Borg also reported long -term drug problems after the early end of his success career. He started with cocaine when he lived in Milan, where drugs were always present in his environment and he had no friends, Borg said in a rare television interview in the Swedish radio station SVT. “It wasn’t particularly good time,” he said. “Drugs, pills, too much alcohol … that destroys life.”
The evening before a show match in the Netherlands in the 1990s, he took cocaine and the following day before the eyes of his father Rune collapsed completely on the street-and only woke up in the hospital. “The doctor explained to me: ‘If you had come a little later, you wouldn’t have survived,” said Borg on the show. It was terrible for him that all of this happened in front of his father. “I never felt so ashamed in my life,” said Sweden’s athlete of the 20th century.
According to “Expressen”, Borg also reports a serious incident in 1989 in the memoirs. His wife at the time could not revive him and called an ambulance. “I had a dangerous combination of drugs, pills and alcohol in the body that led me to lose awareness,” says the newspaper in the book. Borg therefore describes the incident as an overdose and call for help.