<p>The tennis great was carried down Mount Kilimanjaro on a litter Thursday night and Friday morning. Navratilova said she knew by Wednesday she wouldn’t be able to summit the 19,340-foot (5,894-metre) mountain in Tanzania.<br /><br />“I didn’t feel bad, I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get a full breath of air,” Navratilova said shortly after being released from the hospital, where she was treated for high-altitude pulmonary edema.<br /><br />“Nothing hurt, and for an athlete that’s weird. Nothing hurt but I (couldn’t) go on,” she said.<br />The 54-year-old, who had a bout with breast cancer earlier this year, reached nearly 14,800 feet (4,510 metres) when a doctor with the 27-person climbing team told her she needed to descend.<br /><br />Quitting, Navratilova said, is not in her vocabulary, but “when the doctor said you’re going down, you’re going down.”<br /><br />She was disappointed and frustrated, but trying to push on would have been dangerous. The winner of 18 singles Grand Slams, Navratilova kept a diary during her four-day climb. Her last entry read:<br /><br />“‘I’ve never been so utterly exhausted. Everything is taking monumental effort, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, setting up tent. I don’t want to ever...’ I can’t read it. I stopped writing because I was crying, because I was so disappointed at how I felt,” Navratilova said.<br /><br />She wrote the entry Thursday afternoon, a few hours before descending.</p>
<p>The tennis great was carried down Mount Kilimanjaro on a litter Thursday night and Friday morning. Navratilova said she knew by Wednesday she wouldn’t be able to summit the 19,340-foot (5,894-metre) mountain in Tanzania.<br /><br />“I didn’t feel bad, I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get a full breath of air,” Navratilova said shortly after being released from the hospital, where she was treated for high-altitude pulmonary edema.<br /><br />“Nothing hurt, and for an athlete that’s weird. Nothing hurt but I (couldn’t) go on,” she said.<br />The 54-year-old, who had a bout with breast cancer earlier this year, reached nearly 14,800 feet (4,510 metres) when a doctor with the 27-person climbing team told her she needed to descend.<br /><br />Quitting, Navratilova said, is not in her vocabulary, but “when the doctor said you’re going down, you’re going down.”<br /><br />She was disappointed and frustrated, but trying to push on would have been dangerous. The winner of 18 singles Grand Slams, Navratilova kept a diary during her four-day climb. Her last entry read:<br /><br />“‘I’ve never been so utterly exhausted. Everything is taking monumental effort, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, setting up tent. I don’t want to ever...’ I can’t read it. I stopped writing because I was crying, because I was so disappointed at how I felt,” Navratilova said.<br /><br />She wrote the entry Thursday afternoon, a few hours before descending.</p>