Wilander and Bugno in Icelandic Caffeine Scare

Reykyavich (Iceland) –  Last night, Icelandic ambulance workers sped through the empty streets of Horn, a small fishing village on Iceland’s most Northern coast, to rescue ex-world No.1 tennis player Matz Wilander (class 1964) and ex-tour de France winner Gianni Bugno (also class 1964) from a potentially lethal caffeine overdose.

Wilander in his Old Days

 The duo, famous in the 80s and early 90s for their sporting achievements, was in Iceland for a week-end fishing break organised by the OCC (Old Championes Club), a charity organisation set up to help out old sport legends coping with their professional after-life. Both keen fisherman, Wilander and Bugno met each other while co-investing in fishingwales.com, an e-commerce web-site, which promotes wild fishing adventures for white middle-aged men. Both retired sportsmen are  known to have had an extremely difficult adjustment process to normal lives, with Wilander trying an improbable come-back as a chess player in the late 1990s and Bugno squandering most of his savings in bad investments in the creative condoms industry.

According to local sources, the duo, who had been out fishing for most of the short cold Icelandic day, was already  heavily inebriated by the time they returned onshore. After a few more drinks at the Hornvik Cove, the local pub, the old stars headed to a restaurant and carried on drinking. According to Arnmundur Brynjólfur, a local Horn resident interviewed by NBC, Bugno and Wilander were sitting quietly in the corner chatting away when Wilander suddenly became agitated and brandished his fishing rope mimicking a series of double-handed tennis backhands, which nearly took out the waitresses’s eyes. “Wilander seemed to openly challenge Bugno at something but we could not understand what it was - I can beat you, I can beat you at anything you shadow of a man , son of a shoe-maker he kept shouting”  Arnmundur said, adding “He was clearly drunk because there is nothing wrong with being a shoemaker, particularly at the time when shoes are all about brands and not about real quality”.

Bugno a Few Years Ago

According to Runólfur Rut’s account “Bugno remained calm and challenged Wilander at drinking what initially looked like pints of beers, but later we understood were pints of cappucinos, which we all thought was extremely odd.  Those two sat at the bar, downing pint after pint staring at others’ faces in silence, as the barman kept refilling their glasses“. Around 20 pints into the challenge, Wilander collapsed with severe stomach cramps, while Bugno kept drinking another few insisting on having them topped with cinnamon, before joining his opponent on the floor clutching his stomach.

An ambulance from the Horn hospital was promptly called and the two were administered an extremely powerful stomach pump in situ using the frothing machine, as the situation looked dramatic and there was limited time. Currently, under strict monitoring at the Landspitali University Hospital in Reykyavich, both Bugno and Wilander are reported to be in stable conditions and should recover over the next few days.