As an 18-time Grand Slam winner, Martina Navratilova is known as a fierce competitor. That tenacity helped her as she faced a double-whammy of having throat and breast cancer at the same time. The tennis star is opening up about her recent illnesses in her first U.S. interview since, a TODAY show exclusive.
“The first one diagnosed was throat cancer, and then when they were looking to see exactly where it was, that’s when they found a lump on my breast,” the 66-year-old Wimbledon champion told Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on TODAY on Oct. 2. “I knew it was cancer.”
Over the past 13 years, these were the second and third cancers she had faced. Navratilova was previously diagnosed with what’s known as stage 0 breast cancer, its earliest form where it doesn’t spread beyond the milk ducts.
“They were two totally different cancers unrelated to the first one,” Navratilova said on TODAY. “I’m trying to figure out … am I that lucky or that unlucky?”
Even though she’s now cancer free, finally feeling well enough to go to the gym and enjoying her new hair cut, she’s still processing her experience.
“Physically, it’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through,” she said. “I almost get PTSD when I come to New York (because) several weeks of treatment were here.”
Navratilova said that the same mindset that helped her win tennis matches guided her through cancer treatment.
“Every other point, you lose. You have to recover,” she said. “That mentality of coming back and believing and staying positive and then surrounding yourself with a good team, that was very helpful.”
A big part of her support team was tennis rival and close friend Chris Evert, who learned she had stage 1 ovarian cancer in December 2021 and announced was cancer-free in January 2023.
“(Chris and I) went through the same thing essentially emotionally, and we spoke to each other and realized how much that mentality that champions mentality … helped us get through this,”…
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