Two champions stick together through on-court and cancer fights

When two of the greatest tennis players in history signed on to make a documentary about the intertwining of their careers and their lives, they thought they knew the story they were going to tell.

Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, the main characters of the first transcendent rivalry in women’s sports, were ready to share how they had become closer than ever after supporting each other through simultaneous cancer treatments.

It was the summer of 2023. Evert was in remission from ovarian cancer, which had been diagnosed in January 2022. Navratilova had completed treatment for early-stage throat and breast cancers, diagnosed 11 months afterward. They were ready to use the clear air in front of them to talk about how each had shaped the other’s life.

Then, the story changed. That winter, Evert’s ovarian cancer returned. She had a round of chemotherapy, and then another scan. It had spread -- this time to her abdomen. Maybe this was going to be something else, something that Evert and Navratilova had not signed up for, and might not want to pursue.

That’s not how they tell it.

“It was more authentic,” Evert, 71, said in an interview before last week’s release of “Chris & Martina: The Final Set,” on Netflix. “Now, they’re going to get the real deal.”

Just days after that interview, the story changed again. Evert was supposed to be in London for Wimbledon. The All England Club showed the film on release night; Evert was scheduled to commentate the tournament for ESPN.

Instead, last week in Florida, Evert underwent exploratory surgery.

“Unexpectedly, a recent, routine CT scan was abnormal, suggesting the ovarian cancer may be back. Surgery is recommended for further treatment,” she said Tuesday, just before leaving for the hospital.

It was not clear what the next steps of her recovery and treatment would look like, she said. Then, on Thursday, Evert posted a further statement on social media, detailing the surgery and the subsequent chemotherapy that treatment would entail.

“Ovarian cancer is relentless, but I will stay optimistic and determined in continuing to fight this battle,” her statement said. “I am deeply grateful to my medical team, my family, friends and everyone who has reached out with kindness and encouragement.

“I look forward to seeing everyone again soon.”

Sports documentaries have been more deal than real in the recent past. As athletes across sports have recognized that they can use film to show the world the version of themselves that they want it to see, star names have flocked to the medium, delivering gauzy versions of their lives and careers that can enthrall fans but also, sometimes, ring hollow. They show the tears and the pain and the hard conversations, but do not always dig all the way down to their roots.

“It’s not a formula to get great filmmaking,” said John Skipper, the former chief executive of ESPN who became an early backer of Evert and Navratilova’s documentary.

“It’s a formula to draw an audience, but this was a bit of a return to making documentaries that are about something that transcends sports.”

“Chris & Martina” is directed by Emmy Award-winning Rebecca Gitlitz and draws from acclaimed sports writer Sally Jenkins’ Washington Post interview with the pair in spring 2023, before the first return of Evert’s cancer. Any chance that it would be an exercise in self-referential hero worship evaporates early.

Evert arrives in a hospital examination room. It’s December 2023. She expects to be told that she is cancer-free. Instead, the doctor tells her, there are more tumors. Another round of chemo. Her blonde hair has just returned to a length and a style she likes, but it is going to fall out all over again. The nausea and the fatigue and all the other indignities of the disease will be back.

“It could have been me, and it was her,” Navratilova, 69, said during an interview about the film. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010; the 2023 diagnosis was a recurrence.

“It’s such a crapshoot,” she said. “Russian roulette in a way, because you can die and through no fault of your own. You get cured only because of where it is, what it is, when they find it. And the cure is much better the sooner you find it.”

Evert knows this better than anyone. She is certain that the only reason she is still alive is that her younger sister, Jeanne, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer before she was. Jeanne tested positive for the BRCA1 gene, which significantly increases the likelihood that a person will get cancer. She died in 2020.

That led Evert to take the same test. Positive. Same gene. Same cancer.

Evert quickly went public with her diagnosis, just as Navratilova had in 2010. Both believed that their status on the tennis court and in culture gave them a unique opportunity, and perhaps a duty, to raise awareness. During the documentary, Evert’s son shaves her head. Her ex-husband and the father of her three children, Andy Mill, accompanies her to appointments.

The production company asked Evert if she wanted it to capture the next phase of her care. She did. She said she wanted people to see what it was really like to have cancer.

“There’s no BS in this film,” Evert said.

Evert and Navratilova have been there for each other for more than five decades, ever since Navratilova broke into the sport that Evert had taken over.

At first they were friends, and then doubles partners, a great champion and one still on her up, dueling and dueling but almost always with the same, safe result.

In their first 20 meetings, Evert won 16 times. The distance kept their relationship close. Then Navratilova got closer to winning every time they stepped on the court, and Evert had to move further away. She broke off the doubles partnership. She couldn’t separate friendship and competition as easily as Navratilova could, and Navratilova was getting to know her game a little too well.

The doubles breakup caused the first rift in their relationship. Navratilova had recently defected from what was then Czechoslovakia. She felt alone in the United States, and she felt that one of her few close friends was pushing her away, though Evert insisted that she was merely ending the sports partnership, not the friendship.

Then Navratilova would take her turn. Her partner, Nancy Lieberman, a top female basketball player of the era, told her she was going to have to train harder and also hate Evert if she wanted to overtake her as the world’s No. 1. Navratilova listened and went icy on Evert. It worked.

The documentary explores all this, how the twists and turns of their tennis rivalry stitched its way into their human lives. Navratilova caught up and pushed ahead of Evert and everyone else, setting a new standard across the world of sports.

That made Evert work harder to try to catch Navratilova in the twilight years of her career. During the documentary, Evert and Navratilova watch several of their matches together, including the 1978 Wimbledon final, when Navratilova won the first of her nine titles on the All England Club grass, and the 1985 French Open final, when Evert won her second-to-last Grand Slam title. Before Evert’s win at Roland Garros, Navratilova had won 15 of their previous 16 matches.

They played 80 times in all, 60 times with titles on the line. Navratilova finished on top, 43-37. They each won 18 Grand Slam singles titles.

The guts of the film portray them long after all that, when life has become about a lot more than forehands and backhands, when the glitz and glamour is mostly in the rearview mirror, and they need people who care to be close to them.

“I think that’s why this will resonate,” Navratilova said. “It’s just raw.”

Just as they wanted it to be.

They went about their treatments differently when their cancers came back. Evert surrounded herself with loved ones -- her son, her sister, her ex-husband. Navratilova sent her wife, Julia Lemigova, away. She wanted to go through her rounds of radiation and chemotherapy alone.

But toward the end of the film, Navratilova enters another one of those hospital examination rooms. She learns that she, again, is cancer-free. She pauses her walk out of the hospital to lean against a wall. When Evert watches that footage, she sees the full woman she has known for 50 years.

“That showed a vulnerability,” Evert said. “She had held it in for so long, and it had come out.”

Now, Evert knows that vulnerability again herself, when to hold it in and when to let it out. Life doesn’t leave anyone, even two of the greatest champions any sport has known, with much of a choice.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published June 28, 2026 at 5:28 PM.