A New breed of Superstar - Elena Baltacha By John Plummer Female tennis players were once better known for looking good than being good. But things are changing. Today’s top players, inspired by the likes of the Williams sisters, have added power to finesse to play a game that appeals to the fit as well as the fashionable. From June 20 the new breed of superstars will be strutting their stuff at Wimbledon, where the best 128 players in the world will be battling to succeed Russian champ Maria Sharapova. ° Few players among the elite take fitness more seriously than British number one Elena Baltacha, 21, who first competed on Centre Court as a 17-year-old. Baltacha weighs a powerful 68 kg and has the third fastest serve in the woman’s game. “My strength is my strength,” she says. Two years ago she ripped up her training manual and developed a much more scientific approach to fitness when illness threatened to end her career. It seems to be working: she is catapulting her way back up the WTA rankings and in January became the first British woman for 14 years to reach the third round of the Australian Open. Her new look regime incorporates everything from Olympic lifting to Pilates while Team Baltacha includes a man who tests her saliva to see how run down she is, a tai chi instructor and strength trainer, as well as more conventional tennis coaches including former world number five Jo Durie. She is now ready to whip some ass on the grass. “Everything about Wimbledon is special,” she says. “I just love playing there.” Bally, as she is known, has already dropped tears of joy and pain at the magical old venue, first as an overwhelmed 17-year-old appearing on Centre Court for the first time and then two years later as a player whose career was on the verge of being ended. Born in Kiev, she moved to Britain when her father signed to play professional football for Ipswich Town. Her brother also plays football and her mother, who massages her after matches, was a pentathlete. “It helped having people around me who knew about sport,” she says. She started playing short tennis aged six and four years later got her first proper racquet. At 15 she moved from Scotland to Enfield, Middlesex, where she joined the Hazelwood tennis academy under the guidance of tennis coaches Alan Jones and Durie. “That was the first time I realised I had to think seriously about the game,” she says. “People were being honest about what I could and couldn’t do and I realised I had to be serious if I wanted to succeed.” Barely two years later she achieved every player’s dream by playing on Centre Court against France’s Natalie Dechy. “It was unbelievable,” she says. “I was supposed to be on Court 4 but two men’s matches went to five sets. I didn’t think I would get on court that day then the referee said ‘we’re going to move you to Centre Court’. I burst out in tears. He thought I didn’t want to play but I was just so excited. After that I can’t remember anything about it.” She lost, but the following year reached the third round. Britain was ready to hail a new star but soon a mystery illness was setting her back. “It started with me getting really tired and taking antibiotics,” she says. “I was getting ill every two weeks.” Doctors diagnosed a liver condition, which is incurable but can be controlled. Overtraining is one of the biggest dangers, which is why her support team includes Wayne Dumpleton, a former European 1,500 m junior champion, who runs a company called Ipro which analyses saliva to test if an athlete’s immune system is weak. If Baltacha’s is, she eases back on training. “It was a relief when I found out what was wrong,” she says. “People said I was unfit and that I must be slacking. It showed this wasn’t true and suddenly everyone was very sympathetic.” If the liver condition were not enough to contend with, Baltacha then discovered a lump on her breast. At 19, she feared her career was over. “I was preparing for Wimbledon thinking it could be my last tournament,” she says. “I was thinking ‘what happens if the results of the tests come back and say I can’t play again?’ I sat in the office waiting for the test results thinking ‘this could be it’.” The tests were all clear but after all she had endured she took six months off to mentally recover. “I didn’t do anything at all at first, I just went over things in my head and decided if I wanted to go for it,” she says. “When I did I started off doing the basics and tried Pilates, tai chi and even playing the saxophone to help my breathing. After three months of that I started playing again.” Conditioning expert Mark Sheppard, who oversees her tai chi and weight training, plays a major part in her day-to-day training regime. Sheppard applies martial arts and biomechanics ideas to get Baltacha, a naturally feisty character, to learn to relax and move more efficiently around court. “The stop-starts and changes of direction required in tennis are incredible,” he says. “You need a body that is fit and balanced to succeed. You don’t get many opportunities to work with players on the tour because of their hectic schedule but Elena’s illness provided an opportunity to go back to the drawing board. We thought we could look at her alignment and get her body as strong as possible so when she came back she wouldn’t have the imbalance that the sport creates.” When she returned to the game her ranking had plummeted to the mid-300s. Her Australian adventure this year brought her back to the big time and yielded almost £20,000 in prize money. Only a handful of players earn megabucks and for someone like Baltacha, who relies heavily on the generosity of sponsors French Connection, the money helps to keep the dream alive as she hovers on the fringes of the world’s top 100 players. But her success in Melbourne also proved that as fit as she is, she can be fitter. Italian Farina Elia, who beat her in the third round, had the most impressive physique Baltacha has ever seen on court. “I don’t think anyone in the changing room compares with her,” she says. “She is solid. When I walked on court I looked at her and felt so unfit in comparison.” After soaking up the Aussie summer, her next tournament was in freezing Sunderland. Who says the life of a tennis pro is all glamour? But the players and the media had taken note. “I couldn’t believe how much attention I got,” she says. “When I got to Sunderland people were saying it would be easy for me but it was so not like that. For the first time I was the hunted one.” Sadly very few of the hunters are British. Good British tennis players, particularly female ones, are rarer than honest politicians. “The standard isn’t good enough and there aren’t enough people pushing the ones at the top to get higher,” admits Baltacha. “Tennis is an expensive sport and when children are seven or eight it’s cheaper for parents to buy them a football or take them swimming. Also, our public courts aren’t that good and tennis isn’t very high profile over here.” The lack of interest all changes for two weeks when the Wimbledon gates open. Baltacha’s excitement is obvious when she’s just talking about the tournament. “The best thing about it is the atmosphere,” she says. “You feel it as soon as you come into the ground. Even when I come to practise and the place is empty I get a funny tingle when I arrive.” The flip side is having to carry the hopes of a nation. “The expectation is the worst thing,” she acknowledges. “It starts four or five weeks before when everything goes a bit mad then for those two weeks everyone is interested in you. But I’ve had it a couple of times now so I know what to expect.” She feels for Tim Henman, the British men’s number one who carries an even greater burden of expectation. “Poor Tim gets so much abuse it’s a joke,” she says. “When he retires everyone is going to realise what a great sportsman he really was.” In some ways Baltacha is more Greg Rusedski than Henman, having been born overseas. But talking to her there is little doubt that in everything apart from name she seems British. She still has a Scottish accent, lives in the Home Counties and has a very British sense of humour. “I can’t say I’m Scottish, English or Ukrainian,” she says. “I’m a mix but I’m proud of my roots. I play for the Union Jack so I’m British.” Coming so close to retirement spurs Baltacha on. “I used to take a lot of things for granted,” she says. “After I took six months off I realised how much I loved tennis and how big a part of my life it is. I think I’ve become a nicer person.” Just don’t expect to see too much evidence of it when she is on court at Wimbledon, smashing serves down at over 100mph. TENNIS FITNESS Attitudes to tennis training have changed significantly in recent years. In the past, players spent most of their time practising technique and developing their aerobic conditioning so they didn’t wilt in longer matches, which can go on for hours. But the emphasis has changed. Fitter players and better racquets mean rallies are over much sooner, particularly on grass courts where the ball bounces off the surface so fast. “The two most important credentials are speed and attitude,” says Sheppard. “Technique comes lower down.” Speed is not just about sprinting ability, valuable though it is. Anticipating what is going to happen and putting your body in the right position to react quickly are just as important as foot speed, which is why Baltacha’s training focuses heavily on biomechanics, which is about training the body to move in the most efficient way. In a sport like tennis, which involves all kinds of twisting and stress on the joints, biomechanics has a lot to offer. “It’s about finding relaxed pressure. Not being relaxed can slow players down,” says Sheppard. He says most young players spend too much time on technique when they should be mastering speed and movement. “Players learn to form the shot but they are late for the ball,” he says. “Working on their movement can help them get to the ball quicker.” Baltacha’s weight training complements her tai chi by strengthening her body in the areas that come under most stress due to the constant twisting involved in the game, particularly her knees and ankles. Traditional weight training exercises are adapted to replicate on-court moves, for instance she does one-legged squats while leaning against the wall to promote power in either leg while off balance. It’s highly sport-specific stuff, which is why she also does exercises such as forearm curls. You won’t see many women training their forearms and wrists down at your local gym but chances are their livelihood doesn’t hinge on their grip strength. “My six months off playing was the first time I took weight training seriously,” says Baltacha, who lifts twice a week. One session emphasises upper body and the other lower body. Abdominal exercises are included both days. Sessions last for 40 minutes and usually consist of two to three sets of 10 repetitions per exercise. For upper body she does a lot of rowing for shoulder stability, forearm curls, pull-ups for back and presses for shoulders, always using dumbbells rather than barbells because the range of movement enhances her core stability. Dips or dumbbell pullovers work triceps. Lower body sessions focus on targeting those injury-prone knees and ankle areas. Strengthening the outer quads cushions her knees from the effects of the constant pounding the game puts on them. She has also started incorporating Olympic lifting techniques into her programme to increase core strength. “Weight training has become much more sport-specific,” says Sheppard. At 68 kg, Baltacha doesn’t want to get any bulkier because the extra weight could slow her down on court so she trains with relatively light weights. “My stamina is spot on but I need to get sharper and quicker,” she says. “I need to move with more flight, more balance and flow. I don’t need to be running miles and miles, I need to be doing more dynamic, sharp moves to get lower lactic levels. A point lasts 10 to 15 seconds so it’s important to recover quickly, especially if I’m serving, so I can do it again and again.” For all its grace and beauty, top level tennis has evolved into a game in which only the superfit survive. “Training is like a job to me,” says Baltacha. “I come in at 8.30am and leave at 5.30pm like everyone else. On Monday to Friday I do two to two-and-a-half hours of tennis on court and I spend as long in the afternoon working on my fitness. It’s tough.” M&F