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Martina Navratilova looks on after the Women's Singles Final match during the 2022 U.S. Open in New York. |
Martina Navratilova, a tennis star who dominated the game in the 1970s and 1980s and amassed 59 major titles over her illustrious career, has been given the news that she has been diagnosed with breast and throat cancer.
Navratilova, 66, said on Monday that she will begin therapy later this month. The prognosis is favorable, according to her agent Mary Greenham, who wrote to NPR through email. Both of these malignancies are in the early stages and have positive prognoses.
During the Women's Tennis Association championships in Fort Worth, Texas, last autumn, Navratilova, a tennis commentator, reportedly detected an enlarged lymph node on her neck. It turned out to be stage 1 throat cancer after a biopsy. Then, when Navratilova was having testing for her throat tumor, medical professionals found a separate breast malignancy.
Navratilova is battling cancer for the second time. She made the announcement that she had breast cancer in 2010 after a lump was found during regular mammography. After having the tumor surgically removed, Navratilova received a short radiation therapy treatment.
In 1956, when Prague was still a part of communist Czechoslovakia, Navratilova was born there. She rose to prominence as a tennis prodigy while still a teenager, taking home her first professional singles victory in the United States in 1974.
After turning 18 the following year, she informed U.S. immigration authorities in New York City that she intended to leave Czechoslovakia. She received a green card shortly after and was naturalized in 1981.
Her work and personal history were heavily influenced by her exile from communist Czechoslovakia. Navratilova said to NPR in an interview last year that she didn't know whether she would ever see her family again after she departed.
"By fleeing and prospering, I showed the communist government who was boss. But because it was a one-way ticket, I had to give up precious time with my family that I could never get back "She spoke.
Her relocation to the US coincided with the rise of Billie Jean King and Chris Evert as well-known and electrifying figures in women's professional tennis.
In addition to becoming the first tennis player, male or female, to earn $10 million in a career, Navratilova would also become the first female to earn $1 million in a single season. She achieved 59 major event victories overall, including 18 Grand Slam singles championships, 31 women's doubles trophies, and 10 mixed doubles titles. The only other woman to surpass Navratilova's 332 weeks as the top female player in the world is Steffi Graff. She was named Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in 1983 and 1984.
At age 37, she ended her career as a full-time singles competitor in 1994. However, she kept playing doubles far into the 2000s, and in 2006, a month or so before she turned 50, she won her 59th and last championship at the U.S. Open.
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