Martina Navratilova starts Twitter row with Megan Rapinoe over trans women in sports

Tennis great Martina Navratilova has fired back at US football icon Megan Rapinoe in an ongoing row over whether trans women should be allowed to compete women’s sports.

On the eve of her final World Cup, Rapinoe, 38, said she would “absolutely” welcome a trans woman onto the US Women’s National Team and that celebrities questioning their participation were fuelling transphobia beyond the sports field.

Rapinoe told Time that Navratilova, ESPN anchor Sage Steele and Dave Chappelle were all responsible.

“Dave Chappelle making jokes about trans people directly leads to violence, whether it’s verbal or otherwise, against trans people,” the star winger told Time.

“When Martina or Sage or whoever are talking about this, people aren’t hearing it just in the context of elite sports. They’re saying, ‘The rest of my life, this is how I’m going to treat trans people.’”

After Rapinoe’s comments went viral, Navratilova took to Twitter to deliver a one-word response: “Yikes…”.

The 66-year-old 18-time Grand Slam winner, who has been married to wife Julia Lemigova since 2014, regularly uses her enormous social media platform to speak out about social issues such as racial equality and politics.

She has also faced criticism for her belief that only biological women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

When World Athletics announced in March that it wanted transgender women omitted from major international competitions, Navratilova called it a “step in the right direction”.

“In the wake of World Athletics’ announcement, I think the best idea would be to have ‘biological female’ and ‘biological girls’ categories and then an ‘open category’,” she wrote in an opinion piece for The Times.

Meanwhile, Rapinoe joined 40 professional athletes in signing a letter to Congress in April voicing their opposition to the Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act, arguing that it would exclude women and girls from the mental and physical benefits of sport.

Rapinoe told Time that the claim that a trans athlete would be taking the place of a “real woman” was “extremely transphobic”.

“What you’re saying automatically in the argument... is you don’t believe these people are women. Therefore, they’re taking the other spot. I don’t feel that way.”

She went on to say that lawmakers claiming to care about women’s sports were actually weaponising it.

“Oh, now we care about fairness? Now we care about women’s sports? That’s total bulls***. And show me all the trans people who are nefariously taking advantage of being trans in sports. It’s just not happening,” she told Time.

Navratilova, who was diagnosed with throat and breast cancer in 2022, recently said she was doing OK after a “very difficult year”.