In the night between Saturday and Sunday the former British tennis player Elena Baltacha (photo ©Christian Mesiano) passed away. In November 2013 she announced her retirement from tennis and in early 2014 was diagnosed with a liver cancer that caused her death.

Elena Sergeevna Baltacha was born on August 14, 1983 in Kiev, in the then USSR and now in Ukraine. The daughter of a football player and an Olympic athlete in the pentathlon and heptathlon, she moved to Britain in 1989 when her father went to play football first in England and then in Scotland. She stayed there and become a British citizen.

Elena Baltacha ended up playing tennis and turned pro in 1997. When she was 19, she was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a group of chronic disorders that also affect the liver. Nevertheless, between 2002 and 2012 was the n. 1 British player.

In the course of her career, Elena Baltacha reached n. 49 in the WTA rankings in 2010, winning a total of 11 ITF tournaments. In 2012 she represented Great Britain in the Olympic Games in London, in both the singles tournament and in the doubles one, which she played with Anne Keothavong.

During those years, Elena Baltacha suffered various injuries , which eventually forced to retire from her professional activity when she was just 30. However, she didn’t abandone the world of tennis because she completely dedicated herself to the Academy she founded in 2012 together with her coach Nino Severino. With him she had also a romantic involment, so much that the two of them got married last year.

The announcement of the terrible diagnosis arrived at the beginning of 2014 shocked the world of tennis. Now Elena Baltacha’s death caused an even bigger shock. There are plenty of demonstrations of sympathy coming from her fellow players and other people within the tennis world. In all of them there’s a great sadness for the death of a young woman we saw on court not long ago.