(Berlin) In 1985, Boris Becker won the Wimbledon tournament. He was 17 years old. Never had such a young tennis player triumphed on the lawn of the most prestigious of Grand Slam tournaments. At 18, he retained his title in London, then won four more Grand Slam events.
The one who was nicknamed Boom Boom – for his powerful serve – did not, however, manage to reproduce his successes off the field. Last April, Becker was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for concealing assets of three million euros from his creditors.
“Who is Boris Becker? asks American documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie) In Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Beckerpremiered on Sunday at the 73e Berlinale. A documentary in which Becker himself participated, who was interviewed by Gibney in 2019, then in 2022, just two days before his sentence and his incarceration.
” If you can handle victory and defeat/And treat those two imposters just the same (“If you can meet Triumph after Defeat/And receive these two liars from the same front”). These lines from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, Yew, are inscribed above the players entrance to center court at Wimbledon. ” My house “. says Boris Becker, where Alex Gibney interviewed him.
PHOTO NADJA WOHLLEBEN, REUTERS
Documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney
According to the documentary filmmaker, what made Becker successful is also what contributed to his downfall. A theory to which the main interested party seems to subscribe. “You have to be a bit crazy to win Wimbledon at 17. You have to like to play with the limits, to cross the lines to do what no one has done before,” Becker said at a press conference on Sunday, just two months after serving an eight-month prison sentence.
To be a champion in a sport, living a normal life is almost impossible. When the going gets tough, I get better at tennis. In life, it’s something else. It took me a while to reach a certain maturity and to better control my life. I paid a high price for my past mistakes. I learned my lessons from it. I am more humble today.
Boris Becker
We felt the former world number one nervous. He took a deep breath before the start of the press conference, no doubt dreading the questions about his recent setbacks. There were a few, of course.
“A lot of things have happened in my life in the past five years. Tennis wins and losses have prepared me for these ups and downs, even life in prison. It was very difficult. I left prison and I see life differently. I am with my family and I can rebuild my life, he says. I hope people will see another side of the famous person sitting in front of you. »
Alex Gibney’s documentary, which is the first part of a diptych that will soon be available on the Apple TV+ platform, focuses mainly on the tennis player that was Boris Becker. From his first triumphs in local tournaments in Leimen, his hometown, at the age of 6. Going through his teenage successes with the other German world tennis star of the time, Steffi Graf, who lived in the nearby town and trained with him.
Until Becker’s great matches against his greatest rivals: John McEnroe, Stefan Edberg, Ivan Lendl… Gibney presents them on the screen as duelists from the Wild West, to music by Ennio Morricone taken from Sergio’s spaghetti westerns. Leone. If you are a tennis fan and are old enough to have enjoyed 1980s tennis – which was followed religiously in my family – Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker should please you.
PHOTO STEFANIE LOOS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Boris Becker and Alex Gibney
Becker talks about himself, but also interviews his exuberant coach, the former tennis professional, Olympic hockey player (!) and Romanian billionaire Ion Tiriac, his childhood idol Björn Borg, and his adversaries McEnroe, Mats Wilander or Michael Stich again. So did Novak Djokovic, whom Becker coached for three years and supported him while he was incarcerated.
It is also about the pressure that high level athletes are under. Tennis being, perhaps more than any other discipline, with its endless matches and constant concentration required, the most stressful sport of all. To sleep, between two tournaments on two continents, Boris Becker became dependent on sleeping pills.
We remember Alex Gibney’s film, Oscar winner for Taxi to the Dark Side (on torture by the American armed forces), that Boris Becker has long been convinced that he was capable, as in tennis, of getting out of any impasse. It was magical thinking. His prison sentence forced Gibney to review the film’s structure.
In the documentary, contrary to the fiction, one writes the scenario at the end, not at the beginning.
Alex Gibney at a press conference
Gibney does not present Boris Becker as a cheater, however, in the same way as he did with Lance Armstrong in The Armstrong Lie. It is, after all, an “authorized” biography, produced by an avowed admirer of the player. Becker even presents himself, in some ways, as a victim. The world, and particularly the German press, has it against him, he believes.
The film ends abruptly, as Becker continues to hit. Part of his story remains to be told. The documentary will have a sequel. Like the life of the former world number one, it risks being less glorious.
On the very evening of his retirement from Wimbledon in 1999, while his wife, pregnant with a second child, was hospitalized with contractions, Boom Boom has a “brief encounter” – on the stairs of a London restaurant – with a Russian model, who told her eight months later that he was the father of her child.
Alex Gibney will presumably explore the darker side of the character in the second part of his documentary. Expensive divorce, multiple alimony, personal bankruptcy after risky investments, use of false diplomatic passports: Becker’s post-career is a succession of bad decisions and bad news published in the newspapers. Until this condemnation and this imprisonment.
Ironically, in March 2022, in order to repay part of his debts, Boris Becker had to auction rewards that he had hidden until then from his creditors. Among these were two Wimbledon champion medals…