Marion Bartoli has said John Inverdale’s “absolutely disgusting” remarks after her 2013 Wimbledon triumph compounded the “constant pressure” she faced over her appearance.

Speaking about her life-threatening battle with anorexia, Bartoli brought up former BBC presenter Inverdale’s infamous comment questioning whether her father had told her she would have to work harder because she was “never going to be a looker” like Maria Sharapova.

Inverdale made the remark on Radio 5 Live after Bartoli won her first and only grand slam title.

“I still can’t understand the comment he made,” Bartoli said in an interview with The Times. “How on earth, when someone just achieved a childhood dream, can you say that? It is just absolutely disgusting, so yes, unfortunately it’s been a constant pressure. And it’s only on female [players]. A male would never be treated that way.”

Bartoli retired six weeks after winning Wimbledon and went on to lose about 30kg (4st 10lb) during the subsequent three years. She was barred from playing in an invitational event at the Championships in 2016 when doctors expressed fears over her health and she spent several months in a hospital on a stomach-feeding tube.

At the time, she said she “feared for her life” after contracting an unknown virus that caused the dramatic weight loss.

Bartoli had previously downplayed the impact of Inverdale’s comments, telling the Radio Times in 2014 when both worked for ITV at the French Open: “I’d known John a long time, and I knew what he was trying to say. At the end of the day I am a tennis player, I know I’m not six foot tall, I’m not the same long, lean shape as Maria Sharapova, but the beauty of tennis is that anyone can win, tall or short.

“Everyone starts with their own assets, not everyone is born the same way, but the point is that in sport – in life in general – the message is, if you have determination you can still make it happen. In my mind it was never really a story.”

Inverdale also told the magazine: “I was feeling so ill that day, I had terrible hay fever and all I could think of was that I wanted to go home to bed. I had Andy Murray in the final the next day, I knew I had to be on form. Your mind is going all over the place, we’re on air from 12 noon till 7pm with not a single word written and you’ve got to fill the time.”

He added: “I’m not making excuses here, just trying to explain. And I was going to say that in your early years, you’re dealt a set of cards. And actually I was going to use the phrase ‘physical attributes’ and then – and remember, you’re thinking all this in a split second – I thought: ‘No, don’t say that.’ And then I said something far worse.”

Inverdale said that he knew that he had committed a gaffe but that his BBC training meant that he did not say sorry.

“It was drummed into us over and again: never explain, never apologise, because if you do you’ll dig an even bigger hole,” he said. “So I thought: ‘I’ll just keep going and hope nobody heard it.’”

The BBC received 700 or so complaints about Inverdale’s remarks. The broadcaster said that he “was horrified” for Bartoli that, “at her moment of triumph” there was “some idiot distraction”.

Inverdale had earlier apologised to the player at the Wimbledon champions’ dinner.

He added: “I went up to say I was sorry and her exact words to me were: ‘Don’t worry about that, what do you think of my heels?’

“And I said: ‘They look great.’ Which they did.”

Inverdale, 69, left the BBC five years ago and sits on the Rugby Football Union council and the board of Cheltenham Racecourse.