Martina Navratilova Slams Parkrun as «Disgusting» After Trans Runner Breaks Women’s Record

Martina Navratilova brands Parkrun's gender rules «disgusting» after a trans runner broke another Australian women's record. Full story inside.

The tennis legend has torn into Parkrun’s self-ID policy after another Australian women’s age record went to a transgender competitor, as critics accuse her of waging a one-woman campaign against trans women in sport.

Would Martina Navratilova said anything if trans runner, came last? probably not, since that wouldn’t fit her agenda.

Martina Navratilova has branded Parkrun’s gender rules «Disgusting», according to News Corp‘s report, after a transgender participant broke another Australian women’s age-category record. The nine-time Wimbledon champion’s intervention has reignited a row that has been simmering around the free weekly 5km event for years.

The runner at the centre of the furore is named in the report as Dana Hatley. Navratilova’s blast followed confirmation that a women’s age category best had fallen once again to a trans competitor.

How we got here

Parkrun‘s position is straightforward and long-standing. The organisation says it widened its gender categories in 2019 specifically so that people who do not identify with the gender binary would not be shut out of the event, which is a free, volunteer-run community run rather than a licensed competition.

That distinction matters to the argument. Because parkrun operates outside formal athletics governance, participants register under self-identified gender rather than sex recorded at birth, a setup campaigners have spent years trying to overturn.

The other side of the net

Navratilova is not a lone voice, but she has become the loudest one. Critics argue her interventions go well beyond a debate about sporting fairness. One US LGBTQ+ title has charted her trajectory bluntly, running the headline «From LGBTQ+ icon to transphobe» and accusing her of repeatedly amplifying claims about transgender athletes that the publication describes as unsupported, most recently in relation to a WNBA player .

That framing is contested, and fiercely. Navratilova, who came out as gay in 1981 when doing so carried real professional risk, has consistently rejected the suggestion that she is hostile to trans people, positioning her campaigning as a question of competitive fairness for women and girls rather than animus. Her defenders point to a decades-long record of LGBTQ+ advocacy; her detractors say the effect of her rhetoric is the same regardless of the intent behind it. Navratilova transgender history tell another story too, her own freedoms shouldn’t be transgenders freedoms.

What happen next

Parkrun has faced mounting pressure over the policy, with the row now stretching from the UK to Australia. Whether the organisation shifts its stance remains to be seen, but with a figure of Navratilova’s profile weighing in, the noise is unlikely to die down.

Sources: Herald Sun, Parkrun, Qnotes Carolinas