Melissa Tapper

Melissa grew up in Hamilton, a small town in southwest Victoria, 300 km from Melbourne. She played multiple sports such as netball, basketball, and athletics, and first tried table tennis at the age of eight.

Initially, she wasn't very good at the sport and her brother and sister often wouldn't let her play with them when they went to their holiday house that featured a table tennis table. Despite this, she found the game extremely fun and started playing at school during lunchtime.

Her talent began to develop, and her PE teacher encouraged her to play more. Before long, Melissa became so skilled that her school set up table tennis games at lunch, where anyone could try their luck against her.

Melissa made her first able-bodied junior Australian team at 14 and was the nation's top-ranked junior athlete at 18. Melissa has a physical condition called Brachial Plexus Palsy which came from birth complications. Growing up, she was barely aware of the Paralympics, let alone considering it an option for herself, as she had always played against able-bodied athletes. Once she learned there was a place for her in the Paralympics, she eagerly seized the opportunity.

She competed in her first Para competition in 2009 and finished fourth in the class ten singles bronze medal match at the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Melissa went on to win a bronze medal in the team event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games before qualifying for the Rio 2016 Olympics. She represented Australia in both the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic competitions, becoming the first Australian athlete to compete at both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

At the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Melissa became the first Australian to win table tennis gold at a Commonwealth Games, and she did it in front of a home crowd. She made her second Olympic appearance at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, competing in both the women's team and mixed doubles events.

Unfortunately, the Australian women's team, playing alongside Jian Fang Lay and Michelle Bromley, was eliminated in the first round by Germany. In the mixed doubles event Melissa and her partner Hu Heming were defeated in the first round by the French pair Lebesson and Yuan in straight sets.

Melissa also competed in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, where she claimed silver in the class 9-10 women's team event.

Post-Tokyo, Melissa has continued to excel at all levels of competition including winning 11 out of her 13 matchups at the 2023 Australian National Championships.

During the 2024 Australian Olympic Qualification Tournament, Melissa stunned the field by winning all seven of her matchups - beating six-time Olympian Jian Fang Lay and Tokyo 2020 teammate Michelle Bromley in the process.

At the Paris 2024 Olympics Melissa nearly pulled off the upset of her career in the last Olympic table tennis match of her career, fighting to the last point against an opponent ranked nearly 200 spots higher than her.

In the women’s team round of 16, she took a two games to one lead against her Chinese Taipei opponent Chen Szu-Yu. Chen clawed her way back to take the fourth, before edging Melissa in the fifth to close the match.

“My main goal was to try and win as many points as I could, and kept surprising myself when I got the first set and then somehow got two sets and then had a sniff at almost winning the match,” Melissa said after the match.

“At the Olympic level, I don't know that I've ever won a set. Today I was able to take two and almost run away with the match. So for me, that's an absolute dream.”