BBCFifty years ago, Martina Navratilova left all his acquaintance with Communist Czechoslovakia to start a new US life.
Then an 18-year-old high school student, he is one of the highest Defessors in the Cold War – and he will continue to be one of the most found tennis players.
But talking to the Amol Rajan on the BBC, he said he was afraid of the US today “I don’t leave”.
“I’m not loyal to (US President Endald Trump,” he said, adding that he worries the US becoming a “totalitarian” situation.
Since President Trump is duty in January, his administration has Bringing invading immigration attacksspark Protests in parts of the country. He also began a trip to travel for Citizens from 12 countriesand have reports of Tourists who are detained at the border.
“If I have now in the same position (as in 1975) and I have to live somewhere, it is not America, because it is not democracy,” he said.
If he speaks about politics, Navratilova’s frustration fails. He believed that the people did not notice what he said was a state of gradual aggravation.
The US, he added, “definitely recalls against migrants”.
“I mean, people who are trading in the homeland, let them know because they don’t have to ride completely with Donald Trump’s … because they don’t kiss the ring,” he said.
That decision to harm the US in 1975 is not an easier thing to do, he says. He described to have an “idyllic” childhood growing in Revnice, in modern-day Czechia, with a loving family he left. “I don’t know when I can see my parents again – or when I see them.”
But doing so changed the way of Navratilova’s life. He told a press conference at the time he left Czechoslovakia because he wanted to be a world-tennis number – and he couldn’t do it under house situations “.
He really made a number one – both of women singing 332 weeks, and twice women for a record 237 weeks. He is now widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players.
Navratilova is a double US and citizen citizen, and still living in the US with his wife, Model Julia Lemigova. Does he worry that, in today’s political climate, he can lose his own citizenship?
“Everything is in the air now, and that’s the whole point. Everything walks in egghells, don’t know what happens.”
However, there was a more divided subject that he used to say that he had agreed to President Trump – participating in the sports transgender.
Navratilova is strong in his faith that incorporating trans women to tennis women “wrong”.
He said he does not agree with the current Tennis Association rules (WTAR), that the state transgender can participate in women’s women or they do not discuss testosterone levels.
He said he felt trans women with a biological women’s sports adventaries – a belief that warm debate.
“There should be no ostracism, needless to be bullied,” he said, “But men should play with male games. They still need to compete with the correct category that is the category of male.” That’s just the category.
He added: “By attaching the men’s body of women’s tournament, now there is someone who does not enter the tournament – a woman who has not entered his place.”
In December last year, Lawn in Britain Tennis Association its rules changedMean transgender women no longer play some female tennis homeowners.
And in April, the UK Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s legal meaning was based on biological sex. Asked if he felt the tennis that must follow the lead in the UK court, he said: “100%”
Pushed if we should “spend a little time with sympathy with” Trans People, Navatilova ACLINE – but they still don’t give the right to sex-based spaces. “
‘O my God, I die’
Navratilova is open about his fights with cancer in the last 15 years.
He was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, at the age of 52. After, 13 years ago, it was a second, not related to cancer in his throat.
“The way I learned, I said”, Navratilova said, taking his hands on the sides of his face as it was shocked by something. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, this lymph node is a little bigger’. And one week ago, it’s even more.”
After a scan, doctors also got the second cancer on his chest.
“We got the results, and it cancer,” he said. “And I am like, ‘O my God, I die’.”
Even if he says treatment is “hell”, he feels “everything is good” now.
“Knocking the wood, all clearly, and no effects of all – other than red wine still didn’t taste tequila and vodka,” I laughed. “I’m lucky. The medicine is hell, but the afternoon has become good.”
Did Navratilova cancer get?
“Cancer taught me to actually appreciate every day, I do however,” he said. “But most of all, not to sweat the little things. It’s fixed.”
Amol Rajan Interact: Martina Navratilova is on BBC 2 at 19:00 am 18 June, and In the BBC iPlayer.
