Navratilova gay
On This Gay Diurnal | In 1981 a newspaper revealed Martina Navratilova was a lesbian
Considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time Navratilova won 59 Grand Slam titles across the singles and doubles categories in a career that spanned the 1970s and 1980s. She won the Women’s Singles at Wimbledon a record nine times.
Hailing from Czechoslovakia, the tennis player made a large impact on the game in the early 1970s. She was the runner-up at the Australian Open in 1975, losing to Evonne Goolagong, and also was the runner-up at the French Open, losing to Chris Evert.
After she beaten to Evert again in the semi-finals at the US Open, she went to US authorities and informed them she wished to defect from her communist homeland. A month later she was given a green card and in 1981 became a US citizen.
Shortly after gaining her US citizenship, she gave an interview to sports writer Steve Goldstein at the New York Daily News where she revealed she was bisexual and had been in a relationship with author Rita Mae Brown.
The tennis luminary asked the whistleblower not to disclose the information until she was ready to come out, but it was published on this day in 1981
Lesbian Tennis Star Martina Navratilova Diagnosed with 2 Forms of Cancer
Martina Navratilova, an out lesbian and one of the top female tennis players of all time, has been diagnosed with throat and breast cancer.
Navratilova, 66, told the UK-based newspaper The Timesthat she discovered an enlarged lymph node in her neck back in preliminary November, during the Nature Tennis Association Finals in Fort Worth, Texas, where she was carrying out her duties as an ambassador for the WTA Tour.
Following a biopsy of the lump in her neck, Navratilova was diagnosed with stage one throat cancer, Navratilova’s agent, Mary Greenham, told CNN. While undergoing throat tests, doctors also found a suspicious form in her breast, which was later diagnosed as cancer.
This diagnosis comes 13 years after Navratilova was first diagnosed with breast cancer following a routine mammogram. She underwent surgery to have the tumor surgically removed, and received radiation therapy afterward.
Navratilova expressed optimism about her health status going forward, noting that both cancers are still in the early stages, which typically translates to more positive outcomes for patients if the cancer is
Martina Navratilova is one of the world’s greatest ever tennis players. She won a record-breaking 59 Grand Slam titles, including 18 singles titles, 31 doubles titles, and 10 mixed doubles titles. She was also one of the first openly lesbian professional athletes to come out publicly in the U.S. and has been an advocate for lesbian and same-sex attracted rights.
When it comes to the trans debate, Navratilova has always been transparent, calling it ‘cheating’ to allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports due to the unfair physical advantages.
She has admitted that the online backlash from transgender activists has been “pretty rough” and claimed she had been “jettisoned” by many LGBT groups for her beliefs on Trans women in sports. Despite Navratilova’s views, she has previously stated she is “all for trans rights on a civil level”, and her view is based purely on maintaining sporting integrity.
In this special episode of The Daily T, Martina Navratilova joins Camilla and Kamal to discuss last week’s landmark Supreme Court verdict and what it means for the sport in this country and around the world.
And as Pope Francis’s funeral is set to take place this weekend, we talk
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Martina Navratilova
Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Martina Navratilova is one of the most prosperous female tennis players of all hour. In 1975, the year she turned professional, Navratilova requested political asylum in the United States, and was granted citizenship in 1981. She eventually won 59 Grand Slam titles, including 18 singles titles, 31 women’s doubles titles, and 10 mixed doubles titles. In 1981 Navratilova became one of the first professional athletes to come out as gay. She has been an outspoken supporter of equal rights. In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization, selected her for its National Equality Award. For a number of years, she was involved in an intimate relationship with Rita Mae Brown, author of the acclaimed novel, Rubyfruit Jungle.
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Tennis legend Navratilova on coming out first
Collins, of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, hasn’t had it easy: Coming out led to death threats, he said in Sunday’s Q&A in the New York Times. But we’ve come a lengthy way (baby), from 1981 when King was forced out of the closet. She too got death threats. But while Collins earned an instant hero status after he announced his homosexuality in last year’s Sports Illustrated exclusive, King suffered a slew of cancelled endorsements and “lost all my currency overnight, paying lawyers.”
In the New York Times interview, King gives due credit to fellow tennis champ Martina Navratilova, who was the first world-famous pro athlete to reach out voluntarily. Having been burned herself, King told her pal Martina help in ’81 “Don’t obtain outed! Control your message.”
Navratilova (who King, by the way, calls the greatest all-around women tennis player ever) laid it all out at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit last October, telling me in an interview how she got up the guts to reach out 32 years before Jason Collins became a modern-day game-changer. This very candid conversation with Navratilova was the 2013 MPW Summit participants’ second-mo