Martina Navratilova discusses her criticism of Donald Trump: ‘I just can’t be compliant’ – The Athletic
Martina Navratilova has never been shy about putting herself in line for criticism.
She defected from Czechoslovakia to the United States in 1975, saying that she did not get the chance to fulfill her sporting and personal goals under the Czech government.
In 1981, she came out publicly as part of an interview published sooner than she had wanted. In recent years, she has been criticized for her opposition to transgender women competing in women’s sports. Multiple LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have described some of her views as transphobic.
She has also been heavily critical of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. This had largely been confined to social media until Wednesday, when she became the highest-profile person to take part in a protest campaign run by bipartisan organization Home of the Brave.
“I defected from a totalitarian regime and like hell am I going to be cowed again,” Navratilova says in a video for Home of the Brave.
While many prominent athletes, including LeBron James and Stephen Curry, criticized the Trump administration during its first term, fewer have done so during its second.
“I feel like I’m sometimes screaming into the void,” Navratilova said during an interview Tuesday.
“I still find it helpful to my well-being, as well as feeling that I can still maybe shine the light. Not necessarily change people’s minds, but just make them think and make them realize what is going on.”
Trump, who was a regular at the U.S. Open before his first term, returned to the tournament this year for the first time since 2015. After attending and influencing several high-profile sporting events since his election in November 2024, most notably the men’s FIFA Club World Cup, he sat in the Rolex suite for the men’s singles final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, and drew a mix of boos and cheers when he was shown on the big screen.
Navratilova was at the tournament when George Conway, who runs Home of the Brave, approached her. Navratilova, now 69, became a U.S. citizen in 1981 and lives in Florida with her wife, Julia Lemigova, who is a fixture of the “Real Housewives of Miami” franchise.
That year, Navratilova played her first U.S. Open singles final, against Tracy Austin. She lost the first tiebreak to decide a Grand Slam singles final, which she said during an interview this summer that she has never watched back. Instead, she remembers the awards ceremony, the crowd cheering for her, a new American, as it never had before, even in the afterburn of a crushing defeat.
“That’s why I started crying, not because I lost the match,” she said.
The 18-time Grand Slam singles champion, who won a further 41 major doubles titles, said she is aware of potential retribution for her criticisms, describing the feeling of walking on eggshells in an interview with the BBC earlier this year.
“Being quiet just means being compliant and I just can’t be compliant. It’s not in my DNA,” she said Tuesday.
Almost a year after Trump signed Executive Order No. 14201, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) recently altered its player eligibility policy to conform with that order, and with a directive from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. The amended policy, which bars people assigned male at birth from competing in a USTA-sanctioned event for women at any level (and was first reported by the Handbasket), says that “failure to comply with this directive risks the USTA’s status as the National Governing Body (‘NGB’) for the sport of tennis in the United States.”
The previous policy allowed players to participate in recreational events if they identified as women. Those events did not include international, professional, or collegiate competitions, which are governed by other organizations.
“So I agree with him on one issue out of a hundred,” Navratilova said.
“When I defected and I was able to say anything I wanted to,” she adds in the video, “I did.”
