Elena takes gold at pickleball championships

Partnering Kerry Wishart from Sheffield, Chiu won all their games en route to the final where they came up against the defending 60+ 4.0 champions Suzanne Rouse and Liz Batten.

The pair came out firing and took the title with an 11-5 11-5 win in the final at Bolton Arena.

“It is lovely, we are over the moon,” 67-year-old Chiu said.

Wishart added: “We have known each other a long time through tennis, so we both got into playing pickleball.

“We only once played for the same team in tennis, but have reunited playing pickleball.”

The pair were two of over 1300 competitors taking part across 57 age and skill categories in the fifth year of the prestigious competition.

Thursday and Friday saw the over 50s in action in the mixed, men’s and women’s doubles, before the open age categories take centre stage at the Bolton Arena on Saturday and Sunday.

Pickleball developed as a backyard game in Washington, and is named after the pickle boat in rowing, which sees spare rowers from different teams form a crew.

The name reflects the sport, which has borrowed from other racket sports, as it is played on a badminton doubles-sized court and features playing styles seen in tennis and table tennis.

The game is played with a solid paddle and a perforated plastic ball, while players can only score points on their serve.

Chiu and Wishart are like many players who have come over from tennis, with Chiu maintaining both sports.

The retired secretary won the 3.5 title with Clare Gott last year, but played up a level in 2025 and still came away with gold.

Wishart added: “It looked like we had quite a tough group draw with the two pairs who looked pretty decent, but we didn’t lose any games.”

Chiu said: “We won our group and came into the semi-final which was a tough match.

“It was,” Wishart agreed: “We were 8-1 up and then our opponents kept coming back and then we pulled ourselves together at 8-8.

“We actually had a strategy for how we wanted to play the final, which is unlike us!

“But we changed our strategy because one of the ladies was really good at the soft dinking, so we couldn’t use our power as much.

“We started aiming at the player who was hitting a bit harder and that allowed us to play our game and that worked quite well.”

Pickleball England had a record number of players at the 2025 Knotty’s English Nationals. The tournament took place from 30 October to 2 November at Bolton Arena. For more information: https://www.pickleballengland.org/