Martina Navratilova and wife Julia Lemigova likely won’t follow through with their plan to adopt after the tennis legend’s recent cancer battle.
“I think [adoption] was a nice thought for a while, but I think this has brought it into sharp focus — you know, I’m not really the youngest anymore and I don’t want to be the grandmother on the playground,” Navratilova, 66, said in a forthcoming “Piers Morgan Uncensored” interview.
“Forget that part, there’s just not enough space I think for this to happen.”
Even though the retired athlete is cancer-free after being diagnosed with stage 1 throat cancer and breast cancer just months ago, she says welcoming a child with Lemigova, 50, would be difficult at this point in time.
“We were thinking about adopting but that’s definitely put on hold, and I don’t think it’s going to happen,” a visibly emotional Navratilova told host Piers Morgan.
“I think it’s just too complicated and the energy — I only have so much right now.”
Her spouse, Lemigova — who stars on Peacock’s “The Real Housewives of Miami” — previously explained during the Season 5 reunion that the adoption stalled due to the health scare.
“When you’re adopting a child, it has to be about the child,” Lemigova told moderator Andy Cohen.
“And right now it’s everything about Martina and for her getting [healthy]. We’re putting it on hold.”
Navratilova announced her two cancer diagnoses in January, telling fans that both were detected early on.
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“This double whammy is serious but still fixable, and I’m hoping for a favorable outcome,” the tennis Hall of Famer said in a statement to the Women’s Tennis Association. “It’s going to stink for a while, but I’ll fight with all I have got.”
She previously had breast cancer in 2010 but beat it after a lumpectomy and six months of radiation.
When asked how far along in the adoption process they were at the reunion — which taped in December 2022 — Lemigova said they were pretty close.
“We were thinking any moment the agency would call and give us the happy news that we were going to have a baby,” the model explained.
Lemigova is the mother of daughters Victoria, 23, and Emma, 16, from previous relationships. She also welcomed a son named Maximilien in 1999, but he tragically died as an infant under suspicious circumstances.
Lemigova and Navratilova have been a couple since 2006. They got engaged at the US Open in September 2014 and married in New York City that December.
The full interview with Navratilova airs Tuesday on TalkTV.
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