Sportspeople-Heroes Who Overcame Illness, Part I.

The first part of our compilation of athletes, who combatted illness and survived, will be inspiration to us all.

We all know the feeling: we wake up one day with the eerie feeling that something is not completely okay with the world. Then comes the sniffles and a sore throat and fever.

• Lance Armstrong was disqualified
• Bacterial Meningitis: flu-like
• Navratilova wanted to raise awareness

We toss and turn in our beds, we cry like babies and take pills like they are candy. Fair enough. But what about those people who were really, truly, seriously ill, not with something as banal as the flu, I’m talking about real diseases, like cancer or severe heart conditions. These athletes are true heroes who fought, won and continued on their road to success.

Lance Armstrong

Fans of mobile casinos will definitely be familiar with this world-famous cyclist. He became the winner seven consecutive times on the Tour de France after he battled his disease. According to The Observer, he was diagnosed in 1996 with testicular cancer, with metastases in his lungs, brain and abdomen. After intensive treatments, he was declared cured, and he went on to cycling. He even established a charity for supporting people with cancer. However, in 2012, his stellar record in wins was revoked, because drug tests proved that he had been using performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals. He retired from competitive cycling the same year.

John Cullen

If you regularly use online internet casinos to bet on sports like the NHL, you will probably be familiar with a bit of hockey history: The Observer states that John Cullen, the professional player for teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Tampa Bay Lightning, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. They found a baseball-sized tumor in his chest. Thanks to many sessions of chemotherapy, has was declared cancer-free in 1997, but just as he thought he was out of the woods, he went into cardiac arrest. He survived that, too, with months of immune-repression and treatment. He returned to the field in September 1998.

Venus Williams

The wonderfully talented tennis player has had issues with Sjörgen’s syndrome. Her symptoms got so bad, that Medicinenet stated that she had to drop out of the U.S. Open. She was diagnosed in 2011, and said the following to USA Today about why she withdrew from the competition: I have recently been diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease which is an ongoing medical condition that affects my energy level and causes fatigue and joint pain…”
She got the necessary treatment and returned very soon to the Tennis court; she played in the WTA Tour in 2012, not even a year after her diagnosis. Wow.

Martina Navratilova

The favorite tennis player of many who love to bet on sports in the UK, Martina Navratilova declared that she has breast cancer in the spring of 2010. According to Healthline, she was somewhat luckier than many, who have been diagnosed with breast cancer; she had a more noninvasive tumor. The successful tennis player had the mass quickly removed and underwent six trying weeks of chemotherapy. The nine-time Wimbledon champion originally wanted to keep her illness a private matter, but finally came to the conclusion, that going public would also raise awareness and maybe save some lives.

Jamie McLennan

Many years ago, in 1996, the New York Islanders’ goalie, Jamie McLennan fell victim to bacterial meningitis. According to The Observer, he was just visiting members of his family in Alberta, when he came down with flu-like symptoms. In the hospital, however, it turned out that he was infected with bacterial meningitis, a disease that can lead to very serious complications, like loss of hearing or brain damage. He came close to dying that day. McLennan spent a week in the ICU and managed to fully recover. He soon went back to play and thanks to his talent, was awarded the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy. Lucky for gamblers, there were no mobile betting sites back then, otherwise they would’ve gotten really scared.

To be continued…