Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Martina Navratilova won 59 Grand Slam titles across singles and doubles during a career that spanned the 1970s and 1980s. She won the Wimbledon Women’s Singles title a record nine times.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Navratilova made a major impact on tennis in the early 1970s. She was runner-up at the Australian Open in 1975, losing to Evonne Goolagong, and was also runner-up at the French Open, where she lost to Chris Evert.
After losing to Evert again in the semi-finals of the US Open, Navratilova informed US authorities that she wished to defect from her communist homeland. A month later, she was granted a green card, and in 1981 she became a US citizen.
Shortly after gaining US citizenship, she gave an interview to sports reporter Steve Goldstein of the New York Daily News, in which she revealed that she was bisexual and had been in a relationship with author Rita Mae Brown.
Navratilova asked the reporter not to publish the information until she was ready to come out publicly. However, the information was published against her wishes on this day in 1981.
Navratilova has since described herself as a lesbian. She was in a long-term relationship with author Judy Nelson. Their relationship ended in 1991 and resulted in a highly publicised palimony lawsuit, which was eventually settled out of court. In 2014, Navratilova proposed to her longtime partner, former Miss USSR Julia Lemigova. The couple married the following year.
Following her tennis career, Navratilova became a political activist, advocating for gay and lesbian rights, animal welfare, and support for disadvantaged children.
In recent years, Navratilova has attracted both support from conservatives and criticism from inclusion advocates for her views opposing transgender participation in women’s sport.
In 2008, Navratilova regained Czech citizenship while retaining her US citizenship. In 2023 the sports star was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer, after receiving treatment she was declared cancer free a few months later.
