Melissa Tapper

Fast Facts

Sport: Table Tennis
Event: Mixed doubles and Teams
Olympic History: Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020
Coach: Mark Smythe
Year Born: 1991
State Born: VIC

About Melissa

Melissa (Milly) Tapper is the first Australian athlete to represent the country at both the Paralympics and the Olympics. Melissa has a physical condition that came about from birth complications, she weighed 11 pound, 2 ounces and got stuck during natural birth.

The doctor had to pull her out by her right arm, tearing the nerves between the neck and shoulder, resulting in the condition Brachial plexus palsy. 

Melissa grew up in a small town called Hamilton in the southwest of Victoria, 300km away from Melbourne.

She played multiple sports such as netball, basketball and athletics, it was at 8 years old that she first played table tennis.

Tapper was terrible at the sport initially, so much so that her brother and sister wouldn’t let her play when they went to their holiday house that had a table tennis table. However, she still found table tennis extremely fun and started playing the game at school for lunchtime sport.

Her talent began to build and her PE teacher encouraged her to play more. Soon enough Melissa was so good that her school would actually set up table tennis games at lunch, where anyone could come and try their fate against her. 

Melissa loves how table tennis combines a bit of everything, there is a need for speed, power and poise.

Growing up she barely knew that the Paralympics existed, let alone that it was an option for her, she’d always played against able-bodied athletes.

Once she learnt there was a place for her in the Paralympics, she jumped on the opportunity. Tapper has a passion to build the reputation of table tennis and its many opportunities, this development she wants to see displayed from the grassroots.  

Tapper made her first able-bodied junior Australian team at 14 and was the nation’s top-ranked junior athlete at 18.

She played her first Paralympic competition in 2009 and went on to finish fourth after going down in five sets in the class ten singles bronze medal match at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Tapper went on to win Commonwealth Games bronze in 2014 in the team event before qualifying for Rio 2016. Tapper represented Australia in both the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic competitions.

At the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Tapper became the first Australian to win table tennis gold at a Commonwealth Games, and to add to the splendour of it all, she did it in front of a home crowd.

Tapper made her second Olympic appearance at the delayed Tokyo 2020 games, in both the women's team and mixed doubles events. 

Playing alongside Jian Fang Lay and Michelle Bromley in the women's team event, the Australian squad would, unfortunately, be eliminated in the first round of the tournament, to team Germany. Melissa would also, alongside Hu Heming, be defeated in the first round of the mixed doubles event, losing out to French pair Lebesson and Yuan in straight sets. 

Melissa would also compete in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic games, where she would claim silver in the class 9-10 women's team event.