Hannah Storm announced she underwent a hysterectomy and said she is now cancer-free, but the longtime ESPN anchor will not be in the broadcast booth for Sunday's New York City Marathon while she takes more time to recover at home. Storm, 64, shared the update in a message posted to her Instagram story, saying she had hoped to return for Sunday's race but that doctors advised additional recovery time following her surgery.
As reported by the New York Post, Storm said she was grateful to be cancer-free after the hysterectomy and thanked Dr. Monica Prasad-Hayes and her team at Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center. ESPN reposted her message and said the network wished her well during her recovery, adding that it looked forward to welcoming her back to SportsCenter soon. Storm said she will instead cheer on her ESPN and ABC marathon broadcast family from her living room, and she wished luck to runners raising money for causes including the Hannah Storm Foundation.
A Scheduled Return That Didn't Happen
Storm's absence is notable because she had been formally slated to work the race. An official broadcast schedule from ESPN Press Room listed Storm as returning to host the marathon program alongside Anderson, Tollefson and Fearnley, with the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon set for Sunday across ESPN2, the ESPN App and ABC7/WABC-TV locally. The timing lands shortly after Storm celebrated 20 years at ESPN this past September, per the Post's report.
This is not Storm's first brush with breast cancer. She previously went public with a diagnosis in a 2024 interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, revealing she had been diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, a type of stage 0 breast cancer. DCIS involves cancer cells that have not spread beyond the breast's milk ducts, according to the Post's reporting, and Storm went on to undergo a successful lumpectomy that year before planning a three-year course of tamoxifen, a hormone therapy drug used to lower the risk of more serious breast cancer in women with DCIS.
How the 2024 Diagnosis Unfolded
Details of that earlier diagnosis were laid out at the time by ESPN's own staff and outside reporting. Storm disclosed the news to Robin Roberts on March 19, 2024, according to ESPN Front Row, which described her condition as the earliest stage of breast cancer — stage zero, non-invasive and treatable. The outlet noted that DCIS makes up about 20 to 25 percent of all breast cancers and that the vast majority of cases, including Storm's, are caught through routine screening.
People.com reported that Storm's diagnosis followed a routine mammogram in November 2023 and a subsequent ultrasound. A follow-up MRI found two areas with cancerous cells, after which Dr. Elisa Port recommended a lumpectomy, which she performed on February 1, 2024. Storm was told afterward that all the tissue around the cancerous tissue was clear, according to the same People.com account. The Cancer Society explains that DCIS means cells lining the breast's milk ducts have become cancerous but have not spread into surrounding tissue; it is still usually treated because some cells can develop into invasive cancer if left alone, and hormone therapy taken for years after surgery can lower the risk of the disease returning or progressing.
A Marathon Broadcast Legacy Interrupted
Storm's history with the New York City Marathon broadcast stretches back more than a decade. She and John Anderson were named lead hosts of ESPN's coverage of the 2013 race, an assignment that marked the first time in 20 years the marathon aired live nationally on ESPN2, according to New York Road Runners. That race came back after the 2012 marathon was canceled due to Hurricane Sandy, and more than 47,000 runners were expected to take part, per ESPN Press Room's announcement at the time.
Storm is married to Dan Hicks and has three daughters, according to the Post's report. For now, Sunday's marathon broadcast will go on without her in the booth, as she continues recovering at home with the goal of returning to SportsCenter in the near future.
