She was ranked number one in the world for seven years; won 18 singles and 41 doubles Grand Slam tennis titles on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour; holds 167 singles titles, more than any other player, male or female; and holds a record nine Wimbledon singles championships.

These are just some of the highlights of the illustrious career of Martina Navratilova, which started in 1975 at the age of 18 when she famously defected to the US from then communist Czechoslovakia and finished in 2006 when she won her final Grand Slam title at the US Open, winning the mixed doubles with Bob Bryan. Her commitment to an extreme fitness regime to get herself in shape propelled women’s tennis into whole new league of power and aggression.

But it’s not just in the area of tennis that Navratilova is a champion. She came out publicly as a lesbian in 1981 to an unsympathetic media that portrayed her as the ‘ugly/butch/muscular/aggressive’ dyke, pitting her against her ‘pretty’ rival Chris Evert. Her openness about her sexuality cost her millions in endorsements in an era when The L Word was only a distant figment of lesbians’ imaginations, and her relationships were fodder for the gutter press (her break-up with author Rita Mae Brown involved a gun, and former beauty queen Judy Nelson reduced Navratilova to tears on national TV when she sued her for alimony).

But she stood her ground, lived her life on her terms and has become an outspoken advocate of human and animal rights and issues involving the environment. “Everything is connected for me,” she tells CHERRIE from Aspen, Colorado where’s she’s preparing for an exhibition match against Steffi Graf. “I’ve always been fighting for the underdog who can’t speak for themselves, so the environment obviously can’t fight for itself, the animals most of the time can’t fight for themselves and in gay rights people need a voice because we’re still marginalised.”

As someone who has experienced oppressive governments first hand, Navratilova is highly critical of the Bush administration and is optimistic of a win by the Democrats in the upcoming US election. “I think either way we’ll be in great hands with either Hillary or Obama and I don’t see how a Republican can win,” she says. “John McCain said he’d be happy to be in Iraq for the next 100 years. Well, one, we can’t afford it, number two it’s absolutely insane and shouldn’t the Iraqi people have a say? We are an occupying force.”

These sentiments, along with comments she’s made in other interviews on how businesses and corporations should be run ethically, make you wonder if it’s Navratilova who should be in the running for president. “People want me to run for office but I speak the truth too much,” she laughs. “I prefer being an activist; politicians can’t say what they think.”

So what does Navratilova’s life consist of nowadays, since her retirement from playing professional tennis? Well, in addition to her campaigning work, she’s a commentator for the Tennis Channel, a fitness ambassador for the over 50s (she works out every day at the gym and loves to ski, snow-board, play hockey and go kayaking in Florida where she lives with her partner of several years). And she creates art.

For the past six years she’s collaborated with Slovak artist Juro Kralik on Art Grand Slam – a series of over 200 paintings whereby she hits tennis balls dipped in paint against a canvas. The pair are currently exhibiting them across the world – most recently they appeared at the Australian Open in Melbourne in January this year. It’s something Navratilova is obviously excited and passionate about.

“The initial ideas are either feelings or emotions or ideas that you want to get across, whether it’s a place or a particular time in my life or a tournament or surface,” she explains. “We’re really starting to get going, we’re starting to sell pieces and to do the exhibitions to see what the reaction is.”

So far the reaction has been “great” from the art world, and it’s Navratilova’s contention that art and sport come from similar, rather than opposing worlds. “I always thought of tennis players as artists because we are creating an image and feeling with what we do and different people create different emotions in the spectators,” she says. “It’s unpredictable and that’s what art is too. And then on top of that, with tennis it really is a sport where you draw on the court. It’s fascinating and the first time that a sport and art has been married. People have been painting sporting events forever but this is a sporting event that’s painting itself.”

When asked if she has any final comments for CHERRIE, Navratilova has this to say: “I’ve been talking about this for years but it’s really important for us to be out. To me that’s the most important thing a lesbian or gay person can do for gay rights. The more we are out the less it’s possible for people to discriminate against us. When you make it personal it’s harder to talk about a group of people as ‘them’.”

Visit www.artgrandslam.org and www.martinanavratilova.com

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