Lena Rice

Lena Rice ( born June 21, 1866 New Inn, County Tipperary, † June 21, 1907 ibid; actually Helena Bertha Grace Rice) was an Irish tennis player and Wimbledon champion in 1890.

Life

Rice came in 1866 in the house Marl Hill as the second youngest of eight children of Spring Rice and his wife Anna Gorde to the world. Her father died two years after her birth. At a young age Lena playing with her sister Annie tennis, a little later in Lawn Tennis Club in Cahir.

Rice participated only in the years 1889 and 1890 tournaments. In May 1889, she took part in the Irish Championships, where she was eliminated in the semifinals against Blanche Bingley. In the doubles competition, it reached to the side of Bingley the final, and in mixed they won the tournament with Willoughby Hamilton. The Wimbledon Championships in the same year they only lost the final, again against Bingley. A year later she won at Wimbledon in the absence of pregnant Bingley the final against Jack May. This makes it the only Irish tennis player, who won the Wimbledon Championships.

After her victory, she joined a tournament in more. After 1891 her mother died, she had to possibly take care of the household, and therefore had no more time for tennis.

In 1907 she died at her 41st birthday of tuberculosis.