Elena sparkles at Wimbledon

The great new hope of British women's tennis lives in Enfield, has a Scottish accent, glasses like saucers, and a Soviet soccer star for a father. Elena Baltacha came from the Soviet Union as a small child, but now the 18-year-old wildcard is being cheered on by the home crowd at Wimbledon, where yesterday she beat the number 32 seed Amanda Coezter 5-7 6-4 6-2 to become the only British woman in the third round.

Her victory means that Elena has come a long way since she arrived as a child in the arms of her father, footballer Sergei Baltacha, who was the first Soviet to play for an English league team.

Sergei, a star central defender for Dynamo Kiev, was bought by Ipswich Town and arrived with his young family in 1989.

Elena was five and pictures of her with her father, mother Olga and seven-year-old brother, also named Sergei, arriving at Heathrow airport, now seem a world away. Her father was quoted as saying how warm London seemed compared with Moscow.

Other photographs show Elena wearing outsized glasses and with her arms wrapped around her father outside Ipswich's Portman Road ground.

Sergei, a stalwart of the Soviet national squad who was capped 48 times, had agreed a contract to earn around £10,000 a month, a huge increase on his £6,000 annual income in Kiev. The family, who prefer to be known as Ukranians, each received regular tuition in English.

Just over a year later Sergei signed for Scottish club St Johnstone and then became coach of St Mirren and manager of Inverness Caledonian. As she grew up in Scotland, it was clear that Elena and Sergei junior would follow their father and mother, who was a former Soviet pentathlete, into the sporting world.

Sergei junior was obviously going to join his father on the football field while Elena showed great promise in tennis. Olga regularly clocked up to 1,000 miles a week driving from Perth to Glasgow and back again, so she could have daily tennis tuition.

At 15, Elena was competing seriously. She began travelling the tennis circuit and was picked as a future star by former Wimbledon finalist Olga Morozva, who said she had the talent and the attitude to break into the top 50.

Elena was also convinced she could go further and in 1998 her Glasgow coach Jim McKechnie said: "Elena's athletic potential is vast." Elena now lives with her mother in Enfield, north London, while her father, who was eligible to apply for British citizenship five years after he started living in this country, remains in Scotland where he is still a coach.

He also keeps an eye on Sergei junior who plays for St Mirren and is a Scottish Under-21 international.

More than a decade after arriving in England - and still wearing big spectacles - Elena is the battling her way through the most famous tennis tournament in the world.