Rivals, soulmates and survivors, Chris and Martina together again in New York

NEW YORK, June 10 : For more than half a century, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova have stood as twin pillars of modern sport — rivals, friends, foils and co-authors of one of tennis's most compelling stories.

Their duels shaped an era, transcended the game and helped redefine what female athletes could be: fierce, vulnerable, political, glamorous and unapologetically themselves.

Now, more than 50 years after first meeting as teenagers, the two women whose lives became forever intertwined sit together in New York ahead of the premiere of their Netflix documentary "Chris and Martina: The Final Set" to reflect not only on a rivalry for the ages, but on a friendship that endured long after the final point was played.

“It’s mind-blowing actually, when you think about the first time we met each other,” Navratilova, who turns 70 later this year, said, casting her mind back a lifetime ago. “I remember it better than Chris, because Chris was famous already and I was a nobody.

“If you had told us what would happen it would be ‘You're crazy'. And if you'd told us what careers we were going to have, it would be ‘No way. There’s no way this is happening',” she added, before smiling toward her lifelong adversary and friend.

Evert nodded. “We were so different in our younger years,” she said. “I was this good Catholic girl, prim and proper... I have my nail polish and my little earrings, and you know... trying to be feminine at the same time, and Martina was the jock, she was the athlete. We were so different in every way, shape or form.

“But there's something there. I guess the depth of all of our experiences and our emotions and we’ve been through each other's most important aspects of their life, everything that’s happened between