Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 4, 1993 TAG: 9301040012
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALISON MUSCATINE THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DIFFERENT VOLLEYS FOR NAVRATILOVA
On the eve of Wimbledon in June, tennis star Martina Navratilova fielded question after question about her serve, her volley, her tennis titles.Then came a long pause. "Isn't anyone going to ask me how I'm going to vote?" she said.
The truth is, the 36-year-old athlete-cum-activist would just as soon talk about politics as tennis these days. Don't ask her about her backhand, ask about anti-gay rights Amendment 2 in Colorado. (She will vent.) Or President-elect Bill Clinton. (She will gush.) Or members of the Republican Right. (She will liken them to former dictators in her native Czechoslovakia.)
Navratilova is the greatest woman tennis player ever. And she is also in transition. Now nearing the end of her career that has included a record 161 singles and 160 doubles titles - she has said that 1993 likely will be her last season playing singles - this communist-raised, democracy-inspired political junkie is increasingly becoming a champion of underdogs and unpopular causes.
But unlike most famous and wealthy athletes who hope to use their names and status for lucrative television or business ventures, Navratilova is fashioning a role as a political activist who will focus on human rights concerns.
"I've always had this outrage against being told how to live, what to say, how to act, what to do, when to do it," she said during an hour-long interview recently in her hotel suite in Baltimore, where she was playing in a charity exhibition sponsored by her longtime doubles partner, Pam Shriver.
Recently, Navratilova has popped up in a variety of political arenas. She has joined an ACLU lawsuit challenging Amendment 2, recently wrote an op-ed piece for USA Today, and has contributed money to her favorite political campaigns, including Clinton's and that of Texas Gov. Ann Richards.
Few athletes have dared compromise their commercial selling power or their images by speaking out about politics. Billie Jean King was at the forefront of the women's movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her endorsements virtually disappeared after disclosures she had a bisexual relationship. Arthur Ashe has been a voice against apartheid for years and more recently has become an energetic crusader in the battle against AIDS.
And while others have entered mainstream politics - former New York Knicks star Bill Bradley is a U.S. senator from New Jersey and former NFL quarterback Jack Kemp went to Congress and then was a Cabinet member under President George Bush - Navratilova has no notions of running for office.
"First of all, I can never be president," she said, joking while also expressing some consternation with the constitutional requirement that all presidents be native-born Americans. "But I can't see myself as a politician. I couldn't deal with all the back-slapping and glad-handing."
She has grown accustomed to unorthodoxy, from being left-handed to being homosexual to displaying an emotional and sometimes nervous demeanor on the tennis court. She may be the only athlete to take a break from a tournament to listen to a speech in Congress.
"I just do what feels right from the gut," she said. "If it means I won't get endorsements, that's tough. If it means I have a smaller house and a million dollars less, then that's the price I have to pay."