Boris Becker has been in British prison for seven months for tax evasion. Now he has been released early and is back in Germany. He has not only changed visually, as he explains in an interview. A lot has probably happened to him internally, too.
The guesswork after the release from prison is over: Boris Becker has appeared in public for the first time in 236 days. The time in British prison changed him, said the German tennis superstar in an interview with Sat.1. "I learned a hard lesson. A very expensive one. A very painful one. But it taught me something important and good. And some things happen for good reasons." The broadcaster is now spreading the first quotes from the conversation.
The experiences behind bars have not left the former world star untouched. The first photos now show Becker much slimmer. He has slightly darker, blow-dried hair.
"You're nobody in prison. You're just a number. Mine was A2923EV," said the athlete. "I wasn't called Boris. I was a number. And they don't give a damn who you are."
At the end of April, Becker was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by a court in London because he had not properly declared parts of his assets in his bankruptcy proceedings. He was released on Thursday after 231 days behind bars.
About the last hours before his release and deportation to Germany, the ex-tennis player said: "I sat on the edge of my bed from six in the morning and hoped that the cell door would open. They came at half past seven, unlocked them and asked: Are you done? I said, 'Let's go!' I had already packed everything."
The fact that there was no sign of Becker before the Sat.1 interview was published is all the more surprising in today's digital world. The only thing that was clear was that if Becker was released from prison, he would be deported from Great Britain and had to board a plane to Germany immediately. As is later heard, his flight to freedom took off from Biggin Hill airfield, south-east of London. But for hours, if not days, journalists puzzled over where in Germany the 55-year-old ended up - probably Stuttgart - and when.
Nothing is known about his first steps at home. Also not whether he met mother Elvira or whether he will work again at the German Tennis Association (DTB). "We will continue to have a close exchange with him after his return to Germany," announced the DTB. "Boris Becker has been an integral part of the German tennis family for decades. His merits are and will remain unique."
Above all, observers and fans hope to find out what happened in the life of the tennis legend and led to the almost eight-month stay behind British bars. For many Germans, even decades after his fabulous triumph at Wimbledon in 1985, Becker is the "17-year-old Leimener" who made London's Center Court his "living room" with Becker-Hecht and Becker-Faust.
It is thanks to him - and of course Steffi Graf - that enthusiasm for tennis in Germany skyrocketed from the mid-1980s. Two more times - in 1986 and 1989 - Becker was crowned king of the white sport at Wimbledon. He received a good 25 million US dollars in prize money in his career, plus about the same amount in advertising money as Becker himself stated in court in London. In the world of tennis, he remained a giant even after his career: as the popular "Head of Men's Tennis" for the DTB, as the successful coach of superstar Novak Djokovic and, above all, as a knowledgeable explainer at Eurosport and the BBC.
But there was also the other side of the superstar. In private life he acted much more unhappily than on the center court, in Germany he was mocked for his affairs. As a businessman, he didn't have a good hand either. When trying to pay back money, he took out loans, sometimes at high interest rates. The result: personal bankruptcy. In the process, his lawyer drew the picture of a lovable but naive person who had no idea who he was entrusting his money to and what was being done with it.
Judge Deborah Taylor didn't believe it - and sent Becker into custody. He was released after around seven and a half months thanks to a special rule for foreign prisoners to make room in the overcrowded British prisons. It is unclear when Becker will be allowed to return to his adopted home of London, where his partner Lilian De Carvalho Monteiro lives, who repeatedly visited him in prison.
Sat.1 presenter Steven Gätjen, who met Becker to prepare for the interview, said about him: "I think he's really willing to clean up and clarify a lot of things." As Gätjen has described, it was Becker's description of the first days in Wandsworth Prison that stuck in his mind. "There are not only people there who have committed financial crimes, but also sex offenders, murderers and people who have committed major robberies. Boris Becker told me that he was very afraid of ending up in a collective cell."
Shortly before his arrest in April, Becker was emotional in an interview with Apple TV. "I've hit my rock bottom. I'll see what I do with it," he said tearfully at the time. A few days later he went to prison.
