Martina Navratilova has been described as the greatest female athlete of this century.

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1956, Navratilova first visited the United States in in 1973. Two years later, she defected to the U.S., requesting political asylum. She became an American citizen in 1981.

As a singles Tennis Player, she has won 167 titles including a record nine at Wimbledon. Her victory in the 1995 Wimbledon mixed doubles extended her total of Wimbledon titles to 19, one short of Billie Jean King's record.

As a player, Navratilova was bold and smart, and she dared to do things that others before and since could only imagine. She single-handedly reinvented women's tennis, taking the boundaries and limitations of women's tennis and shoving them higher and wider.

Martina ended her singles career in 1994. As she entered New York's Madison Square Garden for the last match, more than 17,000 fans gave her a two-minute standing ovation while nearly 100 photographers captured the moment. Gabriela Sabatini won that final match, but Navratilova won a place in sports history. Navratilova continues to play doubles.

A red and gold banner bearing her name was raised in her honor, the first woman ever to be so honored in Madison Square Garden. Women still have a long way to go in achieving athletic equality as evidenced by the fact that Navratilova's banner hung in the Garden only a week, and only to be raised again for tennis matches.

In 1978 she began a relationship with Rita Mae Brown, an American activist and writer, but the publicity made her resign as head of the Women's Tennis Association. She later had an affair with Judy Nelson and gained admiration by routinely climbing into the crowd at tennis matches to snog her lover after winning games.

She stepped up her campaigning for lesbian and gay rights and spoke at the March on Washington DC in April 1993. She also filed a law suit against the enactment of the homophobic Amendment 2 in Colorado which bans legal protection for lesbians and gays in the fields of housing and employment.