Martina Navratilova
She won nine Wimbledon titles and came out in 1981 – at the height of her career, at a time when it could have cost her everything.
Martina Navratilova grew up in Czechoslovakia in a tennis-playing family. In 1975, at 18, she defected to the United States during the US Open, because the communist authorities restricted her travel and career. She became an American citizen in 1981.
With her powerful serve-and-volley game and her athletic training, she transformed women’s tennis. She won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record nine at Wimbledon, and 31 in women’s doubles. Her rivalry with Chris Evert is one of the greatest in the history of the sport.
In 1981 she said in an interview that she had relationships with women. She lost sponsorship contracts, but never hid again, and became one of the first major athletes to be openly gay. She campaigned for LGBTQ rights for decades. In 2014 she married Julia Lemigova. Her statements on the participation of trans women in women’s sport have since 2019 also drawn criticism from LGBTQ organisations.
She has survived breast cancer and, in 2023, throat cancer, and continues to work as a television commentator.