Tennis rivals Chris Evert & Martina Navratilova team up against cancer

Fresh Air

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, legendary tennis rivals and lifelong friends, share their journey of friendship, rivalry, and mutual support through cancer battles. Their story is highlighted in the Netflix document

Key takeaways

• Rivalry evolved into deep friendship after retirement.

Transcript preview

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Chris Everett and Martina Navratilova, were the greatest female tennis players of their generation. They were friends and they were each other's greatest rivals in the 70s and 80s. When Everett retired in 1989, they'd each won 18 grand slam victories and they'd each been the top-ranked female player in the world seven times. Navratilova retired in 2006. of a new Netflix documentary called Chris and Martina, The Final Set. It tells the story of how they interacted as friends and as opponents and how their friendship went cold for an extended period when their rivalry became more fierce. When they were each retired, their friendship deepened as they both faced cancer and were able to support each other. Everett was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021. Navratilova was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer in 2021. 22, the same year that Everett had a recurrence. When I spoke with them a couple of weeks ago, they were both in remission. But late last week, Everett disclosed, she just been diagnosed with a recurrence of ovarian cancer. Here's how the interview went a couple of weeks ago. Chris Everett, Martina, and Evertilova, what a pleasure to have you on fresh air. And really like the documentary is so good, both in terms of your friendship, your rivalry, but also the of matches between the two of you that are just spectacular to watch. So congratulations on that. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, what are the odds you'd have cancer at the same time and be a short drive from each other in Florida? It's really amazing. Yeah, this is Chris. Freaky, I can't even, I can't get away from her. You know, everything happens with us. We had a 15 year career and then we got cancer. you know at the same time and it really is freaky but you know I always say if I want someone to be in the trenches with me it's Martina because she has been so supportive and so understanding and so such a calming you know voice to talk to. Yeah we have we have such a level of trust that we know whatever we say to each other it stays there we know where they give each other the best advice we know how to and is no there is no ulterior motive for no you know no playing games and that's how we like it because I think we we both have had so many people's oh you're great this and that they don't you know they don't give you the real story but we've always been honest with each other on that front so you both have or had athletes bodies and you know Martina one of the things you were known for at some point in your career was basically building your body you know like four hour a day training to make your body stronger and then Chris you ended up doing a very similar thing to keep up with Martina and when you had cancer you were really weak I mean it was hard to just walk what was it like for you as athletes to live in a body that wasn't functioning that was very weak well for me I mean so Chris's diagnosis and treatment was much more life-threatening than mine percentage-wise, but my treatment was more difficult physically. I think I was, I brought my yoga mat with me. I was in New York for seven weeks and I literally sat on the yoga mat, maybe half an hour of the seven weeks and did some stretching. I couldn't even do the down dog pose because I would have fallen down. I had absolutely zero strength left. But the longest thing that took was the taste, which I love to eat, so that was tough. But you know we're athletes so we want things to happen right before I had full taste butts coming back, but it all came back. But Chris was, well, you talk about what you went through. Well, I think the chemo kicked my butt, let's put it that way. And, you know, when you think about, you know, I don't want to use the word poisons, but the toxins, you know, it's killing the good cells as well as the bad cells. And it left me very weak, very weak. I would have three or four days of intense nausea and I just would feel tingling in my body and it just wasn't nice. And you know I didn't have the energy, I mean to walk six blocks was was a big deal for me and it was foreign you know it felt like it wasn't my body for sure. Yeah. What were you able to do to support each other through the cancer and its treatment? You know there are a lot of phone calls between us and Martina, who is the cook in the relationship, I don't cook, but Martina would bake bread for me and her wife Julia would cook, make some chicken soup. So I got a lot of pesto. I made your pesto. I got a lot of food from Martina. She got a necklace from me. Yeah, I get jewelry from Chris. She gets food from me. But you know, Martina is my relationship because we've had one for 50 years is not the type where we have to talk to each other every year. day to maintain the closeness. I always knew she was there, she always knew I was there if we needed to talk and that was that. Martina you knew that something was wrong when you felt a lump in your throat, but it was my lymph node. Oh was your lymph node? The tumor was on my tongue based on my tongue but I didn't feel that I just felt a swollen lymph node so if you can. Right and that's what got you asked what got you to be tested. But Chris, you weren't symptomatic, but your sister, Gene, had died of ovarian cancer and she had a genetic mutation and you wanted to see if you had the same thing. Don't it get that right? Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the story to that. My sister, Jeannie was traveling with me to Singapore and we were running to the gate, but I look back and Jeannie was huffin and puffin and not running. And I said, Jeuny was the matter. She's an athlete. And she said, I don't know, I just been out of breath the last few weeks and I just don't know. I think maybe I have a lung, you know, infection or something. And I said, well, did the doctor say that? And she goes, no, I haven't been to a doctor. So I said, Jeannie, you know what, we're going to Singapore for four days. And when we come back, you are going to the hospital right, right, and, believe it or not, she did, she did not, she did not, everything, everything, everything, everything, she did not, everything, everything, everything. turned out fine. She didn't have the Braka gene but she had a variant that was of uncertain significance which means it hasn't been tested enough. You know there's not enough case studies and so they said you know she doesn't have Braka so you don't need to be tested so nobody else in the family was tested but unfortunately Jeannie left it too long and when she went in it was, she had stage four of cancer and it had spread everywhere in her body and she ignored the symptoms because like most women who are nurturers they're caring about their kids and their husband and their family they forget about themselves and that's probably one of the messages I want to get out there if you feel anything different at all slightly you know go get it tested so after my sister died two years later I get a call from the geneticist and they said do you remember that variant that your sister had of uncertain significance well that is that has changed and now that's you basically cancerous and it's braca so maybe we recommend that you and your family go get tested next day I went got tested I had the braca gene in me and that week I got a hysterectomy and they took it all out but you the results came back and they said unfortunately you had a tumor in your ovaries and you have tumors in your fallopian tube. And I was like, are you kidding me? And they said, but you know, it's stage one, you got lucky, you got it early. And by the way, I had had blood tests, I had internal sonograms, I had, you know, everything that you can imagine. And by the way, I had had blood tests, I had internal sonograms, I had, you know, everything that you can imagine. And nothing was detected as far as far as far as cancer and I felt fine, I felt no symptoms. So that was my story and it's like, you know, so I had the brock of gene and I got, I had a hysterectomy and then later on I had a mastectomy because you have a 70% chance of getting breast cancer if you have the brock of gene. Did you freak out Martina when you were diagnosed? Yeah, yes I did. later it's still there, Swone. So I called my doctor and he says we need to get a biopsy and it was on a Tuesday. He says by Thursday or Friday we'll know. So Friday I don't hear anything I call him and he called back like five minutes later he says the lymph node is HPV but the tumor could be anywhere. He literally said it could be in your lungs or your kidneys or your liver and I'm I'm oh my God you know I could like not see next year. So I totally freaked out And then I found that Monday oncologist calls me and he says, well, it's HPB and it's definitely just in your throat. It's not anywhere else. And the cure rate is 95%. And I was so relieved. I had like the worst weekend on my life from what the original doctor said. And then the oncology said, it's going to be nasty. It's not nice. We need to find out where the tumor is, but it's somewhere in your throat. So good news, bad news. And then, and then we scheduled a CT scan, a CT scan, a CT scan, a CT scan. And so then they inject you to see where the tumor is and they said, okay, so we found the tumor, it's at the base of your tongue on the left side, size of about maybe two centimeters, almost an inch. I didn't feel it. And also your right breast lit up, so I know it's cancer. Unrelated to that, and then have biopsy on the breast, and it's completely different cancer tumor, about a centimeter. Same thing. showed. I did not feel anything. The mammogram, the day of the surgery, still didn't show the tumor. So even with the mammograms that we have, they are amazing. They still didn't find it. Only ultrasound found it. So then I had to figure out, okay, what do we do now? You know, then you get into the solution, what's the sequence of cure? Because I had two different cancers that went unrelated. I did the gene testing, I have nothing. I was just, this is my third cancer, second and third cancer, each other. So you had breast cancer in 2010. In 2010 yes. In the