Martina Navratilova

Czech tennis star Martina Navratilova was one of the world's top tennis players in the 1970s and '80s.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1956, Martina Navratilova began playing tennis at a young age, and was one of the top female tennis players in the world in the late 1970s and early '80s. Later in life, she authored a series of fiction books and was active in the gay rights movement.

The most dominant female tennis player in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Martina Navratilova was born as Martina Subertova on October 18, 1956, in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now known as the Czech Republic). Her parents divorced when she was 3, and Navratilova and her mother, Jana, relocated from a ski lodge in the Krkonose Mountains for a new life just outside of Prague. As a result, Navratilova never grew close to her father, Miroslav Subert, a complicated man who suffered from depression and later killed himself after the demise of his second marriage.

In 1962, Navratilova's mother remarried, to a man named Mirek Navrátil. Navratilova eventually took her stepfather's last name, tweaking it slightly by adding a feminine "ova" at the end. Navratilova and her new father grew close, with Mirek becoming her first tennis coach.

The game was certainly in Navratilova's blood. Her grandmother had been an international player who had upset the mother of Vera Sukova, a 1962 Wimbledon finalist, in a national tournament. Navratilova's own tennis instincts were coupled with a passion for improvement. At the age of 4, she was hitting tennis balls off of a cement wall. By age 7, she was playing regularly, working with Mirek and spending hours on the court each day, working on her strokes and footwork.

At age 9, Navratilova began taking lessons from Czech champion George Parma, who further refined the young player's game. At age 15, she won the Czech national championship. In 1973, at 16, she turned pro and began competing in the United States.

In 1982 Navratilova won 90 of 93 matches, including 41 consecutive matches, and 15 tournaments, notably the Wimbledon women’s singles and the French Open women’s singles. The following year she won 86 of 87 matches, the U.S. Open women’s singles, the Wimbledon women’s singles, and the Australian Open women’s singles. Beginning with the 1983 Wimbledon title, she won six consecutive Grand Slam women’s singles titles. The 1980s also marked the height of her friendly rivalry with Chris Evert. Navratilova pitted her serve-and-volley game against Evert’s baseline style in 80 matches, winning 43 of them. In 1986 at Filderstadt, West Germany, she became the second player in modern tennis to win 1,000 matches.

By 1990 Navratilova had won the women’s singles championships of the French Open twice (1982, 1984), the Australian Open three times (1981, 1983, 1985), the U.S. Open four times (1983, 1984, 1986, 1987), and Wimbledon a record nine times (1978, 1979, 1982–87, 1990). In 1987, along with her singles championship, she won both the women’s doubles and the mixed doubles to become the first triple-crown champion at the U.S. Open since 1970. On winning her 158th title in 1992 in Chicago, Navratilova had accumulated more championships than any other player, male or female, in the history of tennis. She retired from singles play after the 1994 season, having won 167 titles in all

Over the next two years Navratilova competed in only a handful of doubles events, and from 1997 to 1999 she did not play on tour. In 2000, however, she returned to professional play, competing in the doubles event at several tournaments, including Wimbledon. That same year she was inducted into the Tennis Hall of Fame. In 2003 she won the mixed doubles (with Leander Paes) at Wimbledon to tie Billie Jean King for most Wimbledon titles overall (20). With the victory, Navratilova, age 46, also became the oldest player to win at Wimbledon. After winning the mixed doubles at the U.S. Open in 2006, she retired from competitive play. Her career totals include 59 Grand Slam titles: 18 singles, 31 doubles, and 10 mixed doubles.

She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including nine consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the women's singles title at Wimbledon a record nine times. She also ties Billie Jean King's 20 Wimbledon titles by winning the mixed doubles in 2006. This was her last career match at the ground.

On 7 April 2010, she announced that she was being treated for breast cancer after a routine mammogram in January that year revealed a tumour. She had the tumour surgically removed and received radiation therapy in May 2010, helping her beat the disease.

Navratilova has since appeared on ITV's 'I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!' and made her debut on 'Dancing with the Stars' in the US on 20 March 2012. Despite coming bottom of the leader board, she wowed audiences with her new long blonde locks.