Ai Fukuhara

Ai Fukuhara is a retired Japanese table tennis player, born on 1 November 1988, who became a popular sports star in Japan. She began playing at the age of three, turned professional at ten and the following year became the youngest player ever to join the Japanese national team. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens she was the youngest female table tennis player ever to debut at the Games. With the Japanese women's team she won the silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. She also won the 2013 Japan Open, is fluent in Mandarin after training in China from a young age, and announced her retirement in October 2018.