Caroline Frost: 'Chris and Martina face a shared present-day predicament: cancer is the great leveller'

You can’t beat a long-term sporting rivalry – but even for elite athletes, life itself can present greater challenges

Week 27 Frostbite Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert-Lloyd

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Add Chris & Martina: the Final Set and Goolagong to your watchlist

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Apparently, there’s a World Cup on and, while I know from the RT postbag it’s not everyone’s favourite TV treat, even for us non-sporties, there’s one headline that transcends this impenetrable game: “Messi versus Ronaldo”. We’ve had 20 years of balletic goals and Ballons d’Or, now it’s the sixth World Cup outing for both and surely the last hurrah. The excitement of both fans and pundits at this prospect is more proof that, in sport as in life, you can’t beat a rivalry.

It’s a concept caught up close and personal in Chris & Martina: the Final Set, a new Netflix doc charting the parallel careers of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, former joint queens of tennis. John McEnroe, who knows a thing or two about it, reflects: “The key to any rivalry is that you make each other better, and you make the sport better. That’s your dream.”

It was certainly a commentator’s dream to have a contest between two such equals and opposites: feminine Evert with her ruffle bloomers, facing an increasingly muscular Navratilova across the net. One a right-handed baseliner, impenetrable and stoic from sunny Florida, the other a left-handed attacker, volatile and emotional from communist Czechoslovakia.

This was the stuff of tennis TV heaven and, inevitably for two such longtime titans of a gladiatorial game, a lot of this material has been covered before. Even so, it’s revelatory to hear of the loneliness both suffered.

Teenage Evert had more trophies than friends, while Navratilova celebrated her first tournament victory by hugging a pole (an actual pole, not a person). We knew Navratilova was made of tough stuff, but the film reveals new Evert depths, too.

What gives their story an almighty update, as well as a prism through which to view their past, is their shared present-day predicament. In an irony not lost on either woman, 2023 saw them both diagnosed with cancer for the second time. As athletes, they presume to take the physical challenges in their stride. But cancer, particularly chemo, is the great leveller.

The film sees Navratilova in New York, sending her family home while she undergoes treatment; though she admits “every scan is terrifying”, this is a court she wants to step onto alone. Meanwhile, in Florida, Evert reveals, “It’s a strange feeling for an athlete not to be in control,” as she contemplates her newly-bald head in the mirror. The pair curl up on a sofa to rewatch their previous Grand Slam encounters, joke about their former competitiveness – “I lost my hair,” “Me too, plus I’m nauseous” – and hold hands as they face uncertain futures. Evert’s ex-husband reflects: “They were battling a war forever on the tennis court, now they’re trying to save each other.”

This comes the same week as I tuned in for Goolagong, a three-part drama detailing how Evonne Goolagong (later Cawley) overcame all manner of prejudices in her native Australia, never mind the All England Club, to become the first indigenous women’s Wimbledon champion, and then the first mother to win the title. I’d like to think a lot of these hurdles are in the past, although the Williams sisters would probably say different.

Both shows are a reminder that, however easy they make it look on the court (or even on the football pitch), true champions’ biggest lessons can come long after the shadows have appeared on Centre Court.

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Chris & Martina: the Final Set is available on Netflix. Goolagong concludes on Saturday at 9.00pm on BBC Four and all episodes are available on iPlayer

Authors

Caroline Frost

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