In sports, you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best.

In sports, you simply aren't considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best.

From 143rd Street in Harlem to the center court at Wimbledon is about as far as one can travel.

I always wanted to be somebody...If I've made it, it's half because I was game to take a wicked amount of punishment along the way, and half because there were an awful lot of people who cared enough to help me.

I hope that I have accomplished just one thing: that I have been a credit to tennis and my country.

I think I've already got the main thing I've always wanted, which is to be somebody, to have an identify. I'm Althea Gibson, the tennis champion. I hope it makes me happy.

In the field of sports you are more or less accepted for what you do rather than what you are.