At the end of the 1980s, Mike Tyson was at the height of his fame. The boxer then crosses paths with a billionaire real estate developer. He wants to turn a charmless town on the New Jersey coast into the new Las Vegas with its own gleaming casinos along the beach. “Atlantic City is a two-hour drive from New York. Besides that, going to Vegas is a camel ride! » says the man who then becomes the new confidant of the world heavyweight champion. For the duration of a few fights, Atlantic City is the new Eldorado of boxing and Donald Trump is lining his pockets.
But the experience is short-lived. Before entering the White House in 2016, Trump closed all of his casinos. In 2024, Atlantic City is a ruined city, plagued by poverty and drugs.
For 35 years, however, Trump and Tyson have remained close and the boxer is one of those who shows his support. The Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States became interested in boxing out of interest. But we cannot take away his passion for sport. Starting with the one he practices almost every day, sometimes to the detriment of an important meeting: golf.
It was on a course that he was the victim of an assassination attempt in mid-September. The tycoon owns around twenty courses on several continents and a veritable greens empire in which the justice system is interested, intrigued by the conditions of its financing.
During his first term, Trump played, according to CNN, around a hundred games of at least 18 holes each. His handicap (his level, the best being 0) would be “10” even if he says it is “3”, which seems impossible at his age (78 years old). Advice from those who shared a game with him: it is best to avoid challenging him. It's not just in politics that the billionaire hates losing. He “cheats at golf like Michael Phelps swims,” writes one of his biographers, Rick Reilly.
One of his balls falls into the water? She finds herself as if by magic the next shot in the middle of the fairway, neither seen nor known. In golf, there is no referee and that's convenient. Cheating in sports came to him very early: in high school, he said he scored a goal in soccer, our football, which he hates, by hitting it so hard that he made holes in the net. Even his teammates say that there was no net in the goal that day.
LeBron James, Stephen Curry avec Harris ; Tiger Woods pour Trump
His first contact with the sport came with another, smaller ball. With his mover's build (1m90), Trump started with baseball. He says he was a remarkable player. “I was supposed to become a professional,” he said on MTV in 2010. It was with baseball that his name appeared for the first time in the newspapers, exactly 60 years ago to salute a home run , a complete tour around the basics.
The American media, however, found no trace of him in the slightest detection of a professional franchise. Exempted from the War in Vietnam because of a foot problem, Trump did not go any further in his desire to become a professional athlete. Later, he tried to buy a few NFL (American football) franchises, without success.
Kamala Harris' relationship with sport is more discreet. A native of Oakland, the Democratic candidate is a fan of the Golden State Warriors, the NBA franchise, which until 2020 played in this city in the San Francisco Bay where she now resides. Up at dawn, she starts her day with a half-hour exercise bike ride wherever she is. She also loves F1 and particularly Lewis Hamilton.
However, she takes her revenge on her rival in terms of support from the world of US sport. Basketball players LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Magic Johnson, Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr; tennis legend Billie Jean King, Coco Gauff, footballer Megan Rapinoe, icon Carl Lewis among others publicly support her. Opposite, Trump counts on Jordan's former lieutenant at the Bulls Dennis Rodman, a few American football and baseball stars, his friend and ex-golfer Jack Nicklaus, the former wrestler Hulk Hogan, the boss of the UFC Dana White.
The latter considers that without Trump, MMA would have been dead born. More surprising: golf superstar Tiger Woods promises him his vote. Woods says he didn't sleep all night after the assassination attempt on his “friend Trump” in July.
