Former SportsCenter anchor Roberts diagnosed with cancer.

Former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Robin Roberts announced today that she has breast cancer, telling a national audience on Good Morning America that she “‘will have surgery on Friday’ and then continue treatment.”

Roberts, who joined ABC News in 2002, was “prompted … to perform a breast self-exam” by the death of Joel Siegel, who passed away from cancer last month.

“And like my good friend Joel, I can’t stress enough how important it is to get screened and checked for all cancers ‘ and to do self breast exams. I am so blessed that I found this in the early stages and the prognosis is so promising that my doctor expects me to be flying planes and hanging on to submarines in the middle of the Atlantic and scaling the Mayan Pyramids in no time in the mornings to come.”

Roberts last worked for ESPN in 2003, co-hosting the Sunday morning SportsCenter with Bob Ley during the football season. More recently, Roberts hosted the in-studio portion of the 2005 Monday Night Football Hurricane Katrina telethon.