After three hours and 26 minutes, Boris Becker (then 24) and Michael Stich (23) threw up their arms in front of 6,000 spectators at the tennis stadium de la Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona. looked at each other radiated. ran towards each other. Hugged each other. A moment for eternity. And above all: One that hardly anyone would have thought possible.
On August 7, 1992, Becker and Stich won gold at the Olympic Games. They won the final against the South Africans Wayne Ferreira and Piet Norval after four sets: 7:6 (7:5), 4:6, 7:6 (7:5), 6:3.
Becker and Stich, now 54 and 53 years old, the greatest German tennis players of all time – who, however, only shared an enmity – had won as a team. At the time, only one person believed that this success was possible: Nikola “Niki” Pilic (82). He was team manager of the German tennis team during the games.
Coach Nikola “Niki” Pilic looked after the duo at the Olympics
Foto: picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS
“The tournament wasn’t that fun for us. We were eliminated too early in the individual games,” Pilic remembers 30 years later. Becker, who had lost the legendary Wimbledon final against Stich a year earlier, failed in the round of 16 against Fabrice Santoro from France, Stich in round 2 against compatriot Carl-Uwe Steeb. In turn, just one lap later on the Mexican Leonardo Lavalle. Pilic’ last hope of success? The double!
“My only wish was that we win a medal after the botched individuals,” he says. The fact that the two stars didn’t like each other didn’t play a role for him in the line-up. Pilic: “I didn’t care what they wanted – I was the team boss. I decided that!”
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At Bayern victory!
Scandal space storm at halftime
Source: IMAGE
A decision that cost him a lot of strength: “The two didn’t talk to each other. I had to maximize my diplomacy and mediate between them. Sometimes I really was more a psychologist than a team leader. I went from one to the other making compliments, some of which were made up. I had to keep her happy.”
He admits: “I lied a lot for gold. But it was just necessary to exaggerate a bit.”
The triumph proved him right. “Both players were very happy after the win,” Pilic recalls. “And me too, of course. I would have liked to have celebrated with both of them in the evening, but Michael immediately flew back to Hamburg. That was a shame, but I had to accept that.”
Becker said coolly at the time: “We just don’t like each other, our common ground is tennis.” And Stich said in retrospect: “The expectation that we have to be friends just because we both come from Germany was absurd. We always wanted to be better than the other.”
Pilic was the only one who managed to unite them. The legendary team boss, who was born in 1939 in the former Yugoslavia, took on German citizenship in 1987 and has lived in Croatia for eight years, still has contact with his protégés from back then. “Both congratulated me on my birthday a year ago,” confirms Pilic. And says: “I’m proud that the boys have always told me that they know exactly what I’ve done for them.”
