Elena Baltacha - obituary

^{Elena Baltacha talks about liver disease}

Elena Sergeevna Baltacha was born on August 14 1983, a month ahead of Anne Keothavong, who was to be her longtime rival for the British variety 1 ranking. The two were born to immigrant households: Keothavong’s parents had fled war in Laos, although Elena Baltacha’s father, Sergei, a specialist footballer with Dynamo Kiev, arrived in Britain after signing for Ipswich Town. Elena’s mother, Olga, was also an athlete, obtaining represented the Soviet Union in the Olympics as a heptathlete.

Elena was just five when the loved ones settled in Ipswich, however she did not absolutely overlook the land of her birth, as soon as notably knocking the Russian player, Maria Sharapova, off her stride by talking Russian on court. Most of Elena’s childhood, however, was invested in Scotland, in which her father moved soon after just a yr taking part in for “The Tractor Boys” in Ipswich.

North of the border he played for St Johnstone an Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and it was in Scotland that Elena Baltacha, even though attending Castlehead Higher School, began to forge her tennis career. She played her very first match as a junior aged 13, and was quickly among the pool of talented teenagers that Judy Murray began nurturing and driving on.

It soon grew to become apparent that Elena Baltacha was a large hitter with wonderful determination. Her unwillingness to whinge and complain would come to the fore more than the subsequent 16 years, as she embarked on a skilled tennis tour that, for gamers like her, in the decrease half of the globe top-one hundred ranking, can show a lot more gruelling than glamorous.

Not that her career was without having its highlights. She was just 18 when, in 2002, she knocked the seeded South African Amanda Coetzer out of Wimbledon. That yr she won the very first two, of eleven, singles titles. 3 occasions – at Wimbledon in 2002 and in Australia in 2005 and 2010 – she superior to the third round of Grand Slam tournaments. Her profession-higher globe ranking was 49.

For 11 many years she was also a pillar of Britain’s Federation Cup crew, winning 33 and shedding only sixteen of her matches for her nation. In 2012 she was again capable to play for Britain, in the London Olympics. “To be capable to say I am an Olympian … it was just an unbelievable expertise. It’s a real honour and privilege when you get called on for your nation.”

Nonetheless she had located enjoying via the pain of her ankle injury an increasing strain. Rather she started to dedicate more of her time to the tennis academy in Ipswich that she set up with her spouse and coach, Nino Severino, whom she was to marry. By March last yr she had not played a competitive match for nine months. Then, suddenly, she rediscovered her appetite for the game.

“I’ll be 30 this yr,” she informed The Telegraph. “I could perform for 4 or five far more many years if I received myself in outstanding form. I had been going for ten years but to have that bit of time off, it actually created me realise what I want to do.” It was not to be. In November she formally announced her retirement.

It was in January this year that a program scan exposed that her liver problem had led to cancer. She described with her normal fortitude placing up with assumptions from some medical professionals, doubtless unaware of her career as an elite athlete, that her illness was a outcome of alcoholism.

Elena Baltacha is survived by her husband. A lot of fellow professionals are due to get portion in a fundraising event in her memory on June 15.

Elena Baltacha, born August 14 1983, died Might four 2014

Elena Baltacha - obituary