Martina Navratilova has cancer again: "I will fight with all my strength"

JANUARY 2, 2023 16:30

Martina Navratilova has announced that she has been diagnosed with two forms of cancer, throat and breast. All this 13 years after she was diagnosed in 2010 with breast cancer that the champion managed to defeat after 3 years of radiotherapy.

Former US tennis star, who is 66 year-old, said the diagnosis came after she realized she had an enlarged lymph node in her neck last November. She said to the Times: "This double whammy is serious but still fixable. I hope for a favorable outcome.

It will be unpleasant for a while, but I will fight with all my might."

Martina Navratilova's career

Navratilova has won 59 Grand Slam titles, including eighteen in singles, thirty-one in doubles and ten in mixed doubles, the most recently the US Open mixed doubles in 2006 at the age of nearly 50.

Thanks to this success she became the oldest athlete, both male and female, to have won a Grand Slam event. She spent 331 weeks at the top of the WTA singles rankings (second only to Steffi Graf who leads with 377) and 237 weeks at number one in the doubles rankings.

She is the only player in the world to have won all events in all Grand Slam tournaments in addition to the WTA Championships and the Fed Cup. Among her records, she also holds that of singles victories at Wimbledon, with nine successes, that the most matches played and won in singles and the most titles won in both singles and doubles.

Another record held by her at the women's level is that of the longest streak of consecutive victories: 74, obtained until November 1984. With Chris Evert she has generated one of the most famous and exciting rivalries in history: the two have in fact faced each other eighty times, including fourteen in Grand Slam finals, with the Czechoslovakian-born tennis player winning forty-three of these matches. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000.