Boris Becker has surprisingly claimed Wimbledon was partly to blame for him spending eight months behind bars. The tennis icon was found to have hidden £2.5million worth of assets and loans to avoid paying debts.
He was jailed for two and a half years in April 2022, but was released later that same year. Becker returned to Germany, but as a result of his conviction, wasn’t allowed to return to the United Kingdom until October 2024.
Becker has since released a book detailing his experience, and at the launch, he told journalists: “My 1985 Wimbledon victory is partly to blame for this.” It’s a subject he explores in further detail in the book, writing: “When you’re suddenly so famous at 17, it feels like you suddenly belong to someone else. The German press told me how I should live and what I should do.
“If I hadn’t won Wimbledon at 17, none of this would have happened. Then I wouldn’t have had this trust in older men to handle my business, nor the habit of letting others manage my finances.”
Becker had hoped to return to the place where he won his first Grand Slam title this year, having missed recent additions following his deportation. However, despite being free to return to SW19, Becker was snubbed by the BBC and wasn’t involved in their punditry line-up.
Whether he is selected by the broadcaster in the future remains to be seen, but Becker has opened up about the struggles he faced while incarcerated. An extract from the book published by The Daily Mail read: “On your first night in prison, it’s the screaming that cuts you deepest. Screaming like someone is hurt. Like they need help. Like someone is dying. You don’t know where it’s coming from, it’s just out there in the gaps between the bright fluorescent lights of the halls and the darkness of the cells.”
He continues: “Perhaps worse than the screaming itself, as it echoes round this cold cell, with its mould and dirty toilet bowl, is the not knowing why it’s happening. Are these men asleep with nightmares, or awake and raging?
“Sometimes you get ten minutes of quiet and you go back to your bunk and thin blanket and try to fit your body into the strange contours and confines of a mattress shaped by a hundred strangers. But it always begins again, triggering more shouts from other cells, an endless rally between opponents who can’t see each other but want to destroy each other just the same.”