Annett Kaufmann is only 16 years old and is already a great young hope for the German table tennis sport. She talks to SWR Sport about her greatest successes so far and the dream of the Olympics.
Annett Kaufmann started playing table tennis at the age of four and a half and today this sport is her life. According to her trainer Sönke Geil, her development was “extremely fast”. Within a year she became European champion in the U15 age group, shortly afterwards U21 European champion and then she was nominated for the German women’s team, with which she won the European Championship title in 2021 – all as a teenager.
And if Annett Kaufmann has her way, then her path should take her much further. Preferably for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles – or maybe in 2024 in Paris.
The Kaufmann family: sport was born
Annett Kaufmann comes from a sporting family: her mother is a former skier, her father was a professional ice hockey player with the Bietigheim Steelers, among others, and her sister Alexandra also plays table tennis. Above all, Annett sees the support of her family as the source of her success. “My sister helps me with school and my parents always drive me to training – and have been for 12 years. I am very grateful for that”.
With competitive sport comes the pressure to perform, but for Kaufmann, who, according to her trainer, is “healthily ambitious”, it is above all her own demands that she wants to meet. “I’m very ambitious and of course I want to win. But if the opponent is better then I have to accept that,” she says. She doesn’t mind the public attention she gets from her successes. When she was voted “Newcomer of the Year” last year, she was looking forward to meeting many sporting idols. Her biggest role model is the Chinese table tennis player Ding Ning. “I’d like to have their technique and footwork, but I also just want to be me,” she says.
Annett Kaufmann honored as “Newcomer of the Year 2021”.
Between sporting and professional future
In addition to sport, Annett is in the 11th grade and has already thought about her professional future after graduating from high school. “I would like to study criminalistics later and work for the police. That would also go well with sport.”
There are great hopes that rest on Annett Kaufmann and there are great goals that she has set herself. But as she says herself, she’s only 16 years old and has plenty of time for more titles. She has her next opportunity at the beginning of December at the youth world championships in Tunisia.
