Renée Richards, Transgender Athlete

Transgender Pioneer
b. August 19, 1934

I made the fateful decision to go and fight the legal battle to be able to play as a woman and stay in the public eye and become this symbol.

Dr. Renée Richards became a transgender icon in 1977 when she won a lawsuit against the United States Tennis Association. Richards sued the Association for its refusal to let her compete in the U.S. Open women's division following male-to-female gender reassignment surgery. In a landmark decision, the New York Supreme Court ruled in Richards's favor.

Richards started playing tennis at an early age. Ranked among the top-10 eastern national juniors, she won the Eastern Private Schools' Interscholastic singles title at age 15. She captained her high school tennis team at the Horace Mann School in New York City and Yale University's men's tennis team in 1954.

In 1959, Richards graduated from University of Rochester Medical School. After serving in the Navy as Lieutenant Commander, she pursued a career in ophthalmology and eye surgery while continuing to compete in tennis tournaments.

At the height of her tennis career, Richards ranked 20th in the nation. In her first tennis tournament as a female, she reached the semifinals in the U.S. Open women's doubles competition. Following retirement, Richards coached tennis star Martina Navratilova. In 2000, the U.S. Tennis Association inducted Richards into its Hall of Fame.

Richards has published two autobiographies: "Second Serve Renée" (1986), also a TV-movie, and "No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life" (2007). She is a renowned eye surgeon and professor of ophthalmology at the New York University School of Medicine.

Bibliography

“The Second Half of My Life.” NPR: Talk of the Nation. February 8, 2007

Fee, Elizabeth, Theodore M. Brown and Janet Taylor. "One Size Does Not Fit All in the Transgender Community." Journal of Public Health, 93.6. June 2003

Selected Works

No Way Renée: The Second Half of My Notorious Life (2007)

Second Serve (1986)

18 October:Martina Navratilova, Tennis Champion

b. October 18, 1956

Martina Navratilova has won 168 singles tennis titles, more than any other tennis player in history, male or female. She has won 58 Grand Slam tournaments, including a record nine Wimbledon singles titles.

"The moment I stepped onto that crunchy red clay, felt the grit under my sneakers, felt the joy of smacking a ball over the net, I knew I was in the right place."

Navratilova knew from an early age that she wanted to be a tennis player. At 16, she turned pro and two years later, she defected from her native Czechoslovakia to the United States. In 1981 she became an American citizen.