He beat cancer and became a runner: The story of Naveen Khatwani from Tenerife

You can talk to Navin Hatvani for 15 minutes and feel like you've been to a psychologist. This 30-year-old guy from Adeje talks so sincerely about how he overcame cancer that he заряжает you with energy and optimism. He not only survived, but became a completely different person, and he's a great runner too.

Navin was born and raised in Adeje, although his parents are from India. He says he is "more Canarian than Indian." He even warned that after talking to the journalist, he would go eat a local dish with his sweetheart. He speaks vividly and with a smile. Always with a smile. Even on those days when he gets up early to train at the stadium, then rushes to work, and after work he still goes to the gym.

In his youth, Navin played football for the local team, but he wasn't very interested in sports. Now everything is different, he is becoming famous in the world of trail and asphalt running in Tenerife. Because Navin is a winner. He wants to "achieve something in running" and is confidently moving towards it. At the Gomera Paradise competition, he took sixth place in the 30 km distance, and a few weeks later he won the short race (12 km) Isla Baja Trail.

Now that he is in great shape, Navin says he has "two lives." One is before 2020, and the other is after he was diagnosed with cancer, which he defeated. "I used to live one life, and now I live another. I am grateful that this happened to me, because now I look at life differently. Before, I only thought about going out on weekends. You know, I see people who still live the same way. I have distanced myself from them. You open your eyes and realize what is important. You drink coffee with these people, and they still have the same conversations as five or ten years ago. They are not moving forward. And I think: what a wonderful life! Where there is quarreling and negativity, I don't want to be. I step aside and go my own way."

And it wasn't easy for this "Navin 2.0". At the age of 25, he suddenly felt severe pain in his abdomen and chest. "I didn't sleep for two or three months, I went to all the hospitals on the island. The doctors told me that I had gastritis, that I should take pills, and everything would pass." But it wasn't like that.

Then the guy was going to move to London. He found a job and left. His arrival in England coincided with the coldest months, and the climate worsened his condition. "The pain was getting stronger and stronger, and I didn't even understand what they were saying to me in English," says Navin.

He returned to Tenerife and went to the doctor again with his brother. "I was crying because I couldn't take it anymore. I asked them to help me, because I can't sleep anymore. The next day I had a CT scan and they saw that I had metastases. My whole body was in lymph nodes. I remember the doctor's face changing when he made the diagnosis. It was two months of chemotherapy. I, of course, went bald and weighed 40 kilograms. Then there was surgery. "If you were 50 years old, you wouldn't have survived," the doctors told me," he recalls. Now, thank God, he feels great.

The most interesting thing about Navin's story is why he started running. His oncologist said that "the best medicine" is "to do sports." "That's right. He was right. The best medicine is sweat. It relieves all ailments," says Navin.

So you started running during your illness? Navin laughs loudly and says: "I live in Fanabe. The hardest thing in life is chemotherapy. You become very weak and you lose the desire to do anything. But not me. I had a great desire to live. I had a week of chemotherapy and a week of rest. On Thursday and Friday of the week of chemotherapy, and the following week, I would go out with a catheter in my chest and run five kilometers every day. I started then, and I still have that five-kilometer route."

"I couldn't rest. I couldn't lie down. My brain was asking me not to stop. Even if I went out at three o'clock in the afternoon to run with the device on my back. People said I was crazy, but I was very stubborn. I knew I would win," says Navin. He won the battle with metastases and got a new, better life.

At the Gomera Paradise competition, he took sixth place in the 30 km distance, and at the Isla Baja Trail (Los Silos) he took first place in the 12 km.

Navin is not only a mountain runner, but also runs on asphalt. He often trains at the stadium, and he plans to run the Valencia Marathon in December. And in March 2026, he wants to run the Tenerife BlueTrail ultramarathon: 110 kilometers. "I like all distances, because if you love running and put in the effort, you will succeed," he says. This is Navin Hatvani, an all-round runner and a true inspiration.