‘Martina and I were about to adopt, then she found she had two cancers’: The tennis legend’s devoted wife, a former Miss Universe, shares the shattering moment their life came to a halt

When Martina Navratilova was diagnosed with two different cancers — one in her throat and another in her breast — three months ago, leading her to fear she ‘wouldn’t see next Christmas’, her wife, Julia Lemigova, took up boxing. ‘I’m literally punching my fears aside; punching the panic out of myself and getting on with today,’ she says.

‘I’ve realised since what’s happened to Martina that today is all you have. You never know what tomorrow may bring.’

Indeed. Martina and Julia — who has two daughters Victoria, 21, and Emma, 17, from two previous relationships — were ‘a phone call away’ from adopting their own much-wanted child, when the phone rang at their Miami home to deliver the devastating news that a swelling on Martina’s neck was cancerous.

A few weeks later, a second unrelated tumour was discovered in Martina’s breast. The adoption plans are now on hold.

‘I’d just come home and was getting out of the car when Martina came out of the house to tell me [about the tumour on her breast],’ says Julia. ‘I ran to her in silence. Grabbed her. Squeezed her. She was like ‘Why is this happening to me?’ and crying.

‘I knew my eyes were getting wet, but she didn’t see my tears. I was saying: ‘Listen, we’ll deal with this.’ She said: ‘Julia, you’re squeezing me too hard.’ It was because I was cramping. I literally forgot to breathe I was so scared.

‘I never saw Martina going down without a battle and where there’s a battle there is hope for a win. So, no, I never imagined losing her — that thought is too terrifying — but even so, there’s somewhere in your stomach where it squeezes.

‘You feel you have no air when those thoughts come into your mind. And you punch them away.

‘I remember Mary [the couple’s agent, Mary Greenham, who is pretty much a part of their extended family] once asked me how I was feeling. I said it was like I was being strangled. I was terrified.’

Thankfully, after several months of brutal chemotherapy and radiation Martina, 66, is in remission.

Indeed, such is this 59 times Grand Slam winner’s gutsy determination, that last week she was back commentating at the Miami Open.

Julia, 50, who married Martina in 2014 and refuses to contemplate a life without the tennis legend, struggles to find the words to articulate her relief.

‘I have a big cockatoo called Jacques, who, when he’s distressed, takes his feathers out,’ she says.

‘That’s how I felt when I thought about Martina. Taking feathers out would be, for me, panicking. That was my usual reaction [to frightening things].

‘But I wanted Martina — I wanted everything — to be like it was before all this happened, so I knew that we had this big journey ahead of us.

‘I couldn’t panic about what might happen tomorrow or what had happened yesterday. I changed my behaviour by living in the present.

‘Like I said, I’m not going to lose Martina, but whatever time I have left with her I will live to the fullest. That’s all you have: today.’