TENNIS: Donald McRae talks to the US captain about her return to the home of childhood evils.

If it was less a homecoming than a continuation of her extraordinary return to tennis, Navratilova's journey to Russia was still freighted with some dark and sombre memories. She may have turned 47 last month, but her searing past in Czechoslovakia burns inside her. It remains the key source of her legacy as arguably the greatest female athlete of all time.

"It all comes flooding back whenever I am there," Navratilova says as she prepares to help the United States win the Federation Cup in Moscow this week. "I was there only last month, when I played doubles in the Kremlin Cup, and it was still difficult for me.

"Russia is now very far from being a communist country, but when I walked around Moscow I kept glimpsing these haunting images. There were statues of Lenin and some neon signs of the hammer and sickle. I remembered myself then as a little girl, living under that oppression. I think this week, with me making my comeback for America, will bring up those days even more strongly."

Navratilova's recall to the Federation Cup, not only as the oldest player in the competition's history but as its most peerless performer with a 37-0 record, also serves as a reminder that she has represented two countries on the court: the US, for whom she has won 28 matches, and Czechoslovakia. While her most outstanding tennis has been played as an American, her Czech roots run deep.

Whether explaining that her mother's generation was weighed down by a sense of litost, Czech for sadness, or remembering the thrilling moment in Prague when, as a tiny girl, she first stepped "on to the crunchy red clay of a real tennis court and smacked a ball over the net", Navratilova speaks of the past in vividly moving detail.

Her parents divorced when she was three years old, in 1959, and she moved to her mother's childhood home in the small town of Revnice, just outside Prague. Under communism, the family's large plot of land had become state property. Only their house and an almost forgotten tennis court, overlooked by Martina's new bedroom, remained.

Tennis gave her a personal reason to dream of escaping to a different world, but, as she remembers, "there was a more melancholic streak in older Czech people. I still feel it today when I look at my mother and her friends. It's the same for anyone there in their 60s or 70s or 80s. They were denied so much. I am just sorry my own mother had to live under that regime for most of her life. I was lucky. I got out and, 14 years later, Czechoslovakia became a free country. So I feel anger, even fury, at this bloody system that ruined so many people's lives for no reason whatsoever.

"Everything is different now. Even though she still lives in my home town, my mother has a much better life. She gets to travel a lot because I'm in America while my sister lives in Sweden. But we can't forget everything her generation went through. She never had my opportunities. When I reached America there was so much space and colour. The possibilities seemed endless. At least that's how I felt at 18.

"But of course I didn't have to take the usual immigrant route of battling to find a job and a home in a strange country. I could play tennis. I spoke the language and I was making money. It was easy, really . . ."

Navratilova's casual description of her defection belies the extent of her own struggle. She was still a teenager when, at the US Open in 1975, she made the momentous decision to seek asylum. Despite spending the bulk of that tournament locked away in a hotel room with FBI and immigration officials, Navratilova still reached the semi-finals, only to lose to America's sweetheart and her future perennial rival, Chris Evert.

A year later, denounced by her former country and still regarded with sneering suspicion by most Americans, who saw her as a heavily muscled product of remorseless, Eastern-bloc communism, a crying Navratilova was "dumped in the very first round" of that same tournament. Feeling lost in America, she did not know whether she would ever visit her family again.

Despite describing herself as being "on the brink of collapse", the 19-year-old Navratilova refused to buckle. Two years later, in 1978, she became the world's best player. Despite further off-court turmoil, as she announced herself as one of the first openly gay women in international sport, Navratilova dominated women's tennis for the next eight years. And though her grand slam victories were ignored by Czechoslovak television and state-run newspapers, the exiled Navratilova's iconic status in her own country still grew in secret tandem with her growing legend in the west.

By the time the Velvet Revolution of 1989 swept the Czech Republic into existence, Navratilova's sporting immortality had been assured. When she finally retired from international tennis six years later, she had won 56 grand slam titles, including 18 in singles. Nine of those singles titles came at Wimbledon.

Navratilova, who is far more approachable and engaging than most sporting icons, admits that only Wimbledon could have dragged her away from a serene retirement. "The strange thing is that I had absolutely no regret when I 'retired'. I had a great life away from the court. I didn't miss tennis at all. And then I agreed to commentate at Wimbledon. Oh boy, that's when the old bug started to bite. I got the itch again.

"I knew I was in good shape and that I could at least handle myself well in doubles. To have not come back would have been such a waste of an opportunity and talent. So blame it on Wimbledon! Everything mushroomed from there.

"I'm training harder than ever and feel far fitter than I was in my 30s. I hit my stride at the US Open in September, and it was then I told Billie-Jean (King) I would be available for selection again."

Navratilova has followed her Federation Cup call-up by declaring her ambition to play at next year's Olympic Games. Is there not a danger that she may delay her final retirement until all the lustre has gone from her game?

"Absolutely not," she insists. "I'll know when it's time to go. I'm already looking forward to spending more time with my life-partner and doing all the things I did with her before the tennis came back. I learned how to fly a plane and do carpentry. I miss those kind of things - and I really miss the (ice) hockey."

The US meet Belgium on Wednesday, in a semi-final made infinitely simpler for Navratilova's team by the absence of Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne. With Lisa Raymond, Meghann Shaugh- nessy and Alexandra Stevenson, Navratilova's team should brush aside the second-string Belgians to face Russia or France in the final.

When a Russian player she defeated years ago refused to shake her hand, Navratilova responded with a direct reference to her Czechoslovak past and the Kremlin's crackdown on the Prague spring of 1968: "You need a tank to beat me."

Such ideological tensions have shifted radically to different parts of the world today, and now more usually involve America than Russia - yet Navratilova can't quite shake herself free from the past.

"I'd like to say I really don't care who we might play in the final. But I guess there will be an extra dimension for me if it's Russia . . ."

And then she laughs, a soft and husky chuckle, no more need for words. Victory over Russia in Moscow would be the sweetest triumph for her mother and her - and for the little Czech girl, called Martina, still deep inside herself.