Nicholas Lum (table tennis) was the youngest member of Australia’s 14-strong table tennis team in Birmingham just two months after his 17th birthday and the second-youngest player to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games after John Tawadrous. Nicholas narrowly missed a medal in two events – losing the bronze-medal play-offs in the men’s doubles with Finn Luu and mixed doubles with Minhyung Jee. He also reached the round of 16 in the men’s singles and was part of the men’s team that narrowly missed a place in the quarter finals on a countback. From the age of seven, Nicholas started going to the local table tennis club every Thursday to watch his dad play and decided to give the sport a go. Since then, Nicholas has risen through the junior ranks, winning multiple national age titles, as well as enjoying success on the world junior circuit. In 2019, he won the men’s cadet singles title at the Janos Molnar Tournament in Hungary – his first international tournament victory and the first by a non-European player – and was selected to go to the World Table Tennis Championships in 2020 before they were cancelled. In 2021, he reached the last 16 at the World Youth Championships and was awarded the Michael Szabados Award as Australian Junior Player of the Year for the second consecutive year. The Year 11 Glen Waverley Secondary College student has been at the forefront of promoting the sport and appeared on Channel Seven’s Little Big Shots in 2017 with his younger brother Lucas.