LEGENDARY tennis player Billie Jean King has been honoured with the lifetime achievement award at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year show.

The 75-year-old American, one of the greatest female tennis players of all time, won 39 Grand Slam titles in singles and doubles competitions.

King is an advocate for gender equality and in 1973 won the Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs.

She is also the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

“We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and we all have an opportunity to share our lives, our experiences and our vision for the future,” King said.

“Each of us is an influencer, and to all the athletes who truly have a platform, let’s continue to use the power of our voices and our actions to inspire others.”

King turned professional in 1959 and gained global recognition two years later when she and Karen Hantze Susman became the youngest pair to win the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon.

In 1966, she won her first major singles title, again at Wimbledon, and was crowned world number one for the first time – a ranking she held for five further years (1967-1968, 1971-1972 and 1974).

She retained her Wimbledon titles in both 1967 and 1968 – the years in which she also won her first US Open and Australian Open singles titles respectively.

In total, King won a record 20 Wimbledon titles as well as 13 US Open, four French Open and two Australian Open crowns between 1961 and 1979. She collected three Grand Slam titles in one year in 1972.

She won 129 singles titles in all, 78 of which were WTA titles. In addition, she won seven Fed Cups as a player and four as the US team’s captain.

King retired from professional tennis in 1983.(BBC Sport)