In a recent interview in a tennis publication, Pete Sampras revealed he suffers from a disease called thalassemia – a low-iron blood condition that afflicts people of Mediterranean descent.

In his first comments about it to the mainstream media, Sampras said yesterday he was diagnosed with thalassemia when he was a kid but never went public with it until now. Sampras regularly takes iron supplements, but sometimes that’s not enough in the Flushing heat from preventing nausea and dizziness.

Said Sampras, “In the heat of battle, there’s a tendency to get tired when the iron’s low and it can affect you.”