The Rivals: Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova: Their Rivalry, Their Friendship, Their Legacy - Tapa blanda

"'The Rivals is must reading for anyone with a passion for tennis and for anyone curious about Evert and Navratilova's utter transformation of the women's side of the game.'" (Billie Jean King)

"'Two stories that, with thrilling inevitability, become one. Beautifully constructed...vivid and enthralling.'" (Simon Barnes The Times)

"'excellent...The Rivals convincingly evokes the social and political temper of those tumultuous times of which the Martina-Chris rvialry is an enduring symbol that preficured the sense of spectacle, mass appeal and sexiness that are so much a part of the women's game today'" (Soumya Bhattacharya Observer)

"'The Rivals is a truly excellent book: finely written, scrupulously researched and fascinating to the end.'" (Joanna Briscoe Guardian)

"'Gripping'" (Valerie Grove Mail on Sunday)

In March 1973 two women met on a tennis court in Akron, Ohio. Over the course of the next sixteen years, together they would change the world.

There has never been a sporting rivalry to match the intensity, longevity, public impact and emotional resonance of the eighty-match-long duel between Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.

In their long careers Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert played each other eighty times, sixty of those in finals. For nearly two decades we were transfixed by the struggle between the ice-maiden Chris - blonde, all-American, a nation's sweetheart - and the supreme athlete Martina, a Czech defector, the first outspoken openly gay athlete in female sport, and a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve at all times. Their careers played out against the backdrop of seismic change in tennis and society, and, together, they helped change the face of women's sport. Thirty years on from that first meeting, both have become legends. Based on interviews with both Martina and Chris and those who knew them best, Johnette Howard gives us their remarkable story.