Yangzi Liu (table tennis) had a tight 4-3 win over India’s Sreeja Akula in the bronze-medal play-off which saw her become the first Australian to win a medal in the women’s singles at the Commonwealth Games. She was also part of the women’s team that secured the bronze medal. She also lost her women’s doubles quarter final with Tracy Feng to the eventual gold medallists and reached the quarter finals of the mixed doubles with Finn Luu. The right-handed attacking player was introduced to the sport of table tennis when she was five years old by her father who was a high-school level coach. She played her first tournament aged six and joined one of China’s most successful clubs, the Cao Yanhua Table Tennis Club, a year later. Liu initially moved to Portugal before settling in Australia in 2019 and is now one of the top youth players in the world, currently ranked just outside the top 10, the highest ever by an Australian junior female player. Yangzi capped off a remarkable 2021 by winning 28 consecutive matches to take under-21 titles in Lignano (Italy), Senec (Slovakia) and Szombathely (Hungary) and then claimed a victory over 2016 Olympic silver medallist Shan Xiaona of Germany in a World Contender event in Slovenia in December. In the lead-up to her Commonwealth Games debut in Birmingham, Yangzi won the women’s singles, women’s teams, under-21 women’s singles and under-21 mixed doubles at the 2022 National Championships as well as gold in the women’s singles at the 2022 TTA Tour in Sydney.