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                                                                                SPORT, Page 62

The Lioness in Winter


At 36, having transformed sports for women, tennis star Martina
Navratilova is managing her decline just as she managed her
career: adroitly and outspokenly

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III


    When she half-strode, half-skipped into Madison Square
Garden to tumultuous applause last week, Martina Navratilova
broke records. But she has lasted so long that she does that
every time she plays -- win or lose. When her opponents had
controversial calls go against them in the opening singles and
doubles matches that she played just an hour apart, Navratilova
set aside competitive advantage for queenly benevolence and
conceded the (not so crucial) points. When she adjourned to the
pressroom after winning both matches, she spoke briefly and
blandly of her play, then waded more eagerly into political
controversy over an antigay amendment to the Colorado
constitution that she is suing to have overturned, and vowed to
quit her beloved Aspen home if she fails.

    If one hadn't seen her running around the court,
contorting into improbable positions to hit impossible angles,
flinging herself into the air to intercept balls streaking in
at 100 m.p.h., exulting at every reassurance that her
athleticism was intact -- after 36 years, more than 2,000 career
matches and double knee reconstruction -- one might have thought
the grande dame of tennis was making a stately segue into the
next phase of a stubbornly public life. But four years after she
started publicly flirting with the idea, the most successful
woman in the history of professional sports is not quite ready
to retire.

    She winces at talk about changes in her body as she keeps
trying -- mostly successfully -- to surpass players half her
age. Tennis is a game of intimidation, and Navratilova's renown
used to have opponents beaten before a ball was struck. Now,
though she prides herself on candor, she struggles not to sound
vulnerable. "Am I a little slower? Maybe. But Billie Jean King
thinks I'm hitting the ball as well as ever, and I definitely
have more shots than I did eight years ago. If I'd had a
forehand down the line back then, I would have won a few more
French Opens, at least." She blends tinkering with her game with
a methodical shortening of her schedule, playing a little less
each year. She has bypassed the French Open, with its two weeks
of endless running on clay, since 1988, and the Australian Open,
in Down Under swelter that can reach 140 degreesF on court,
since 1989. She takes a three-month spring break, plays
no-pressure exhibitions in midsummer and enters a minimum number
of tournaments to meet the rules. Next year, when many people
expected that she would emphasize doubles, at which she is the
best ever, she will focus on singles instead. "Doubles," she
says, "is something I can come back to when I'm older."

    She still evokes awe. Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, who beat
Navratilova twice in 1990 but was steamrollered at the Garden
last week, says, "I really don't think she's getting any less
good. There are days when she plays the best tennis she has ever
played. She just has more ups and downs." When asked about her
highlights of 1992, Navratilova cites two victories and,
unthinkable a few years ago, a defeat by the current No. 1,
Monica Seles, at Wimbledon. "I looked at the videotape, and it
was much closer than I thought," she says with a smile. A couple
of years ago, the sense of might-have-been would have nagged at
her for months.

    Her standing as the all-time greatest in her sport seems
beyond challenge. She has played more singles matches, and won
more, than any other tennis athlete, male or female; she has
captured more titles and earned more prize money -- $18.3
million and climbing. If excellence is measured by a single
shining season, no one is likely ever to top her 1983, when she
went 86-1 and took 16 titles. Or her 1984, when she ended a
55-match win streak with a single loss, then captured her next
74. If the measure is longevity, she has won at least one title
a year for 20 straight years and ranked in the top five for the
past 18.

    "I don't think about history much," Navratilova claims in
public, "or I probably wouldn't play anymore." In private,
friends say, she is acutely aware of her place in history, as
a player and as a symbol. She transformed sports for women by
taking on the training discipline of men -- lifting weights,
running sprints, following a rigid carbohydrate-loaded diet. She
emphasized mental preparation as much as physical, supplanting
the customary touring father or coach with Team Navratilova, a
floating coterie of trainers, playing partners and amateur
headshrinkers -- although they could not always avert the abrupt
collapses of concentration that former player and now
commentator Mary Carillo calls "Martina meltdowns."

    Perhaps her most lasting legacy is having lived as an open
homosexual while competing. Other gay superstars duck questions,
solicit a conspiracy of silence, make marriages of convenience.
Navratilova has told the blunt truth to everyone, from
biographers to Barbara Walters -- not for sensation but to
promote understanding and advance causes like the Colorado suit.
"People in this country don't know what to think about gays,"
she says. "I just hope we turn the energy away from prejudice
to something positive. I'll never run for office -- I'm too
honest for that -- but I hope my career and name mean that I can
be involved on some level, making a difference." Those sound
like the words of a woman in transition. But out on the court
last week, the arms were rippling, the legs were limber, and the
unblinking eyes were still focused on the prize. Martina
Navratilova is the lioness in winter.