Red roots still run deep

Martina Navratilova flew back to the East this week. If it was less a homecoming than a continuation of her extraordinary return to tennis, Navratilova’s journey to Russia was still freighted with some dark and sombre memories.

She may have turned 47 last month, but her searing past in Czechoslovakia burns inside her. It remains the key source of her legacy as arguably the greatest female athlete of all time.

‘It all comes flooding back whenever I am there,” Navratilova said as she prepared to help the United States win the Federation Cup in Moscow this week. ‘I was there only last month, when I played doubles in the Kremlin Cup, and it was still difficult for me.

‘Russia is now very far from being a communist country, but when I walked around Moscow I kept glimpsing these haunting images. There were statues of Lenin and some neon signs of the hammer and sickle. I remembered myself then as a little girl, living under that oppression. I think this week, with my making my comeback for America, will bring up those days even more strongly.”

Navratilova’s recall to the Federation Cup, not only as the oldest player in the competition’s history, but as its most peerless performer with a 37-0 record, also serves as a reminder that she has represented two countries — the US, for which she has won 28 matches, and Czechoslovakia. While her most outstanding tennis has been played as an American, her Czech roots run deep.

Whether explaining that her mother’s generation was weighed down by a sense of litost, Czech for sadness, or remembering the thrilling moment in Prague when, as a tiny girl, she first stepped ‘on to the crunchy red clay of a real tennis court and smacked a ball over the net”, Navratilova speaks of the past in vivid detail.

Her parents divorced when she was three years old, in 1959, and she moved to her mother’s childhood home in the small town of Revnice, just outside Prague. Under communism, the family’s large plot of land had become state property. Only their house and an almost forgotten tennis court, overlooked by Martina’s new bedroom, remained.

Tennis gave her a reason to dream of escaping to a different world but, as she remembers, ‘there was a more melancholic streak in older Czech people. I still feel it today when I look at my mother and her friends. It’s the same for anyone there in their 60s or 70s or 80s. They were denied so much.

”I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people’s lives for no reason whatsoever.

‘Everything is different now. Even though she still lives in my home town, my mother has a much better life. She gets to travel a lot because I’m in America while my sister lives in Sweden. But we can’t forget everything her generation went through. She never had my opportunities.

”When I reached America there was so much space and colour. The possibilities seemed endless. At least that’s how I felt at 18. But of course I didn’t have to take the usual immigrant route of battling to find a job and a home in a strange country. I could play tennis. I spoke the language and I was making money. It was easy, really…”

Navratilova’s casual description of her defection belies the extent of her own struggle. She was still a teenager when, at the US Open in 1975, she made the momentous decision to seek asylum. Despite spending the bulk of that tournament locked away in a hotel room with FBI and immigration officials, Navratilova still reached the semifinals, only to lose to the US’s sweetheart and her future perennial rival, Chris Evert.

A year later, denounced by her former country and still regarded with sneering suspicion by most Americans, who saw her as a heavily muscled product of Eastern-bloc communism, a crying Navratilova was ‘dumped in the very first round” of that same tournament. Feeling lost in the US, she did not know whether she would ever visit her family again.

Despite describing herself as being ‘on the brink of collapse”, the 19-year-old Navratilova refused to buckle. Two years later, in 1978, she became the world’s best player. Despite further off-court turmoil, as she announced herself as one of the first openly gay women in international sport, Navratilova dominated women’s tennis for the next eight years.

And though her grand slam victories were ignored by Czechoslovak television and state-run newspapers, the exiled Navratilova’s iconic status in her own country still grew in secret tandem with her growing legend in the West.

By the time the Velvet Revolution of 1989 swept the Czech Republic into existence, Navratilova’s sporting immortality had been assured. When she finally retired from international tennis six years later, she had won 56 grand slam titles, including 18 in singles. Nine of those singles titles came at Wimbledon.

Navratilova, who is far more engaging than most sporting icons, admits that only Wimbledon could have dragged her away from a serene retirement.

‘The strange thing is that I had absolutely no regret when I ‘retired’. I had a great life away from the court. I didn’t miss tennis at all. And then I agreed to commentate at Wimbledon. Oh boy, that’s when the old bug started to bite. I got the itch again.

‘I knew I was in good shape and that I could at least handle myself well in doubles. To have not come back would have been such a waste of an opportunity and talent. So blame it on Wimbledon! Everything mushroomed from there. I’m training harder than ever and feel far fitter than I was in my 30s. I hit my stride at the US Open in September, and it was then I told Billie-Jean [King] I would be available for selection again.”

Navratilova has followed her Federation Cup call-up by declaring her ambition to play at next year’s Olympic Games. Is there not a danger that she may delay her final retirement until all the lustre has gone from her game?

‘Absolutely not,” she insists. ‘I’ll know when it’s time to go. I’m already looking forward to spending more time with my life-partner and doing all the things I did with her before the tennis came back. I learned how to fly a plane and do carpentry. I miss those kind of things — and I really miss the [ice] hockey.”

Navratilova talks about her basic woodwork skills, for example, with a fervour that almost matches her passion for tennis.

‘I made these two really nice tables and I just thought, wow, I’m so thrilled to have done that! I just love that sense of creating something with my own hands. Now I sure ain’t gonna be as good a carpenter as I am a tennis player, but that doesn’t mean it won’t give me pleasure. I like the simple things in life these days.”

The US met Belgium on Wednesday and Thursday, in a semifinal made infinitely simpler for Navratilova’s team by the absence of Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne.

‘That’s huge for us. If they were playing I guess we might as well just hand them the trophy because they’re number one and two in the world right now.”

Apart from Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati, the Americans are also missing the Williams sisters.

‘I think women’s tennis is in relatively good shape,” Navratilova says, ‘but it would be much better if we saw more of Venus and Serena. Our two biggest stars in the game haven’t played since July. That’s a real shame. The Williams girls compete extremely hard on court because they hate losing — it’s just that they haven’t played an awful lot of tennis over the years.”

When she is asked to compare Serena and herself at her mid-1980s peak, Navratilova’s competitive fire emerges.

‘I would certainly win some matches … but so would she. It’s real tough to say who would win more. I think if she ever reaches her potential she could be better than I was — but tennis is about so much more than just pure ability.

‘Ironically, she and Venus featured in my list of goals at the start of the year. I aimed to win another grand slam and to make it to the Fed Cup. The third aim was to beat the Williams sisters — but I never got the chance to play them. Maybe next year?”

In the meantime, having won the Wimbledon mixed doubles with Leander Paes recently, which earned her a record-equalling 20th title at that tournament and her 58th grand slam, Navratilova is determined to taste more success in Moscow. With Lisa Raymond, Meghann Shaughnessy and Alexandra Stevenson, Navratilova’s US team were heavily favoured to finish off the second-string Belgians before facing Russia or France in the final. The US were 2-0 up after Wednesday’s play.

When a Russian player she defeated years ago refused to shake her hand, Navratilova responded with a direct reference to her Czechoslovak past and the Kremlin’s crackdown on the Prague spring of 1968: ‘You need a tank to beat me.”

Such ideological tensions have shifted radically to different parts of the world today, and now more usually involve the US than Russia — yet Navratilova can’t quite shake herself free from the past.

‘I’d like to say I really don’t care who we might play in the final. But I guess there will be an extra dimension for me if it’s Russia…”

Then she laughs, a soft and husky chuckle, as if there is no more need for words. Victory over Russia in Moscow would be the sweetest triumph for her mother and her — and for the little Czech girl, called Martina, she can still remember from deep inside herself. —