Navratilova Regains Czech Citizenship
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Martina Navratilova, the former tennis champion, said yesterday that she had regained her Czech citizenship more than 30 years after fleeing Communism to live in America.
“I lost it at the time I defected. I got it back on January 9,” Miss Navratilova, 51, said during a visit to Tokyo. She said that she was maintaining dual nationality and keeping her American passport. Born in Prague, she fled to America in 1975 because the authorities refused to allow her to play in America.
She was stripped of her citizenship and became an American citizen six years later. Last year, she said that while she was once ashamed of the politics of Czechoslovakia, she was now ashamed of America under President Bush.
