Boris Becker

The new millennium has not been very kind to Boris Becker. In late 2000, his marriage fell apart in a very public way, just as Germans had grown to accept, and even admire it. After the outcry in the late 1990s, Boris and Barbara had emerged as a glamour couple, a visible symbol of tolerance and racial accord in a country sometimes plagued by racist violence. But in November of 2000, Becker told his wife he wanted a separation. A week later, she flew to Miami, where she filed for custody of the children and a generous financial settlement. The reason was a Russian model by the name of Angela Ermakova who claimed to have given birth to Becker's daughter, named Anna, a charge soon confirmed by a paternity test. Then in 2002, Becker was convicted of tax evasion for keeping an apartment in Munich while claiming exclusive residence in the tax haven of Monaco. He was given a suspended sentence of two years, and a fine of 500,000 euros, which left him a free man, but with a criminal record.

It was a bleak moment for the man who'd burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old with a winning smile and composure well beyond his years. Friends said that for the first time, Becker had been able to live the high life, after retiring from tennis, and that he was going through a kind of delayed adolescence. While it was clearly a darker side to Becker, some would always remember the bright lad who showed up the giants at Wimbledon when he was only 17. Even now, he remains the most famous sports name in Germany—a hero in a country that often was short on them.