WALES – Anna Hursey (born 22 June 2006) is a Welsh table tennis player. She is thought to be the youngest person to represent Wales at senior level in any sport. Hursey competed at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia.
Hursey was born in Carmarthen, Wales, and attended Cardiff High School. She left Cardiff High School after Year 8. Hursey’s mother is Chinese, and in 2019, Hursey moved to Tianjin, China to take up table tennis full-time. She is a United Nations ambassador for climate change in sport, and in 2021, Hursey spoke with US President Joe Biden about climate change.
Hursey began playing table tennis at the age of five. In 2017, Hursey, aged 10, competed for Wales in a European Championship qualification match against Kosovo. In doing so, she is believed to be the youngest person to represent Wales at senior level in any sport. In the same year, she competed at the 2017 World Cadet Challenge. She competed for Wales at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia. She was the youngest competitor in Commonwealth Games history. Hursey was nominated for the 2018 BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award, which was won by Kare Adenegan.
After the 2020 Welsh National Championships, in which Hursey finished second to Charlotte Carey, she was unable to return to China as the Chinese borders were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She instead trained in Peterborough, England. Hursey has been ranked the number one ranked Welsh under-15 woman, and number two ranked Welsh woman of any age. At the 2021 World Youth Table Tennis Championships, Hursey and Portugal’s Matilde Pinto came third in the under-15 girls’ doubles event.
