Four countries. Four flights. All this in a span of 48 hours. It’s not the tale of just a globetrotter, but of a 13-year-old girl from Cardiff who has been making rapid strides in the world of table tennis. Welcome to the world of Anna Hursey.
After finishing her European Youth Championship campaign in Ostrava, Czech Republic, she finally joined her Wales teammates here early morning on Thursday, the second day of the 21st Commonwealth Games. And within a matter of hours, Hursey entered the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium arena and overcame Nigeria’s Ajoke Ojomu to keep Wales’ hopes of qualifying for the semifinals alive.
Despite her age, Hursey is no stranger to attention and absorbing the big-stage pressure. After all, she was the youngest participant at last year’s Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia. While her maturity and consistency at the table is truly amazing, away from it she is just like any other girl her age: a shy, eighth-grade teenager.
Even before she represented Wales’ senior team as a 10-year-old in the European Championship qualifiers, Hursey was in the limelight.
The beginning
Her father, Larry, who was an avid paddler and introduced her to the game early on. And as the child prodigy is contemplating on shifting to China for a longer stint for training, her mother Xiuli Zhang (alias Phoebe), is slightly wary.
“My mom wants me to study and dad is like (pursue) table tennis. I like table tennis more, so both of them are extremely supportive,” she says, adding that she will spend the rest of the British summer in China.
