Gronya Somerville

She was born on May 10, 1995, in Carlton, Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria.⁠[1][2][3]

During the Hong Kong Open in November 2017 she said, “I am half Chinese and half Australian,” and added, “My father was born in Guangzhou before moving to Hong Kong and then Melbourne where I was born.”⁠[4][5]

In June 2021 she said, “My dad passed away when I was three years old.”⁠[6]

She has said that her mother was born in Australia and is of Irish and Scottish lineage. A South China Morning Post article about a week she spent in Beijing states that she was born and raised in Melbourne, where she was living with her Australian mother, and that her father came from Guangzhou.⁠[3][5]

Her high school was Maribyrnong College.⁠[2]

The Minerva Network profile states that she has always been a proud Australian and also takes extreme pride in her Chinese heritage; growing up she realised that she was extremely competitive and highly motivated, fell in love with sport and always dreamed of representing Australia at the Olympics.⁠[7]

Before badminton she played tennis and did gymnastics; she has said that she enjoyed tennis but found it too monotonous and preferred badminton. She also did circus skills such as flying trapeze.⁠[3][8]

She came to the sport through a national talent identification program in Australia. She has said that her primary school physical education teacher gave her a flyer, that she happened to be in the age group being sought and that she had no experience of the sport.⁠[3][6][2]

The accounts differ on when she started: the official Tokyo Olympic athlete profile, the SBS Chinese program page and Badminton Oceania’s player profile say that she began playing at the age of 12; Commonwealth Games Australia’s profile says that she was discovered at a talent identification program in 2009.⁠[3][6][8][1]

She was picked for a squad, and she has said that she loved the sport as soon as training started.⁠[6]

She won her first national junior title at 14; after winning the under-15 national women’s doubles title she was integrated into the national team. Her junior club was the Badminton Academy of Victoria.⁠[1][8][2]

In 2011 she first became a member of the Australian Badminton Team, making the senior Australian team at 16.⁠[2][1]

She has said that Li-Ning, her badminton equipment sponsor, has supported her since 2013, when she was ranked 50th in the world and had not yet won anything big.⁠[9]

In 2014 she won the women’s doubles title at the Oceania Championships with Jacqueline Guan.⁠[2]

She started competing professionally in 2014 and at 19 was selected for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where she played the mixed doubles, the women’s doubles and the team event: she reached the third round of the mixed doubles with Raymond Tam, losing to a Singaporean pair, went out of the women’s doubles in the round of 32, and went out of the team event in the quarter-finals.⁠[2][1][10]

In 2015 she won the Oceania Championships women’s doubles title again, this time with Leanne Choo.⁠[2]

From the same year she partnered Setyana Mapasa in women’s doubles; the pair won their first title together at the Waikato International in New Zealand, in a final that lasted 22 minutes.⁠[2][11]

In 2015 a Chinese publication described her as looking “set to become the next female badminton icon.”⁠[6]

At the end of April 2016 she and Setyana Mapasa were removed from the Race to Rio standings, in which they had been ranked 35th a week earlier; Badzine wrote at the time that the pair had apparently been confirmed as ineligible.⁠[12]

The pair had come close to qualifying for the Rio Olympics, but Setyana Mapasa was ruled ineligible by the governing body after her change of nationality from Indonesia; she said in 2021, “Rio was definitely a missed opportunity.”⁠[13]

On July 3, 2016, she and Setyana Mapasa beat the second seeds, Heather Olver and Lauren Smith of England, 21–15, 21–16 in the women’s doubles final of the Canada Open Grand Prix in Calgary, Canada, their first Grand Prix title.⁠[14]

The Minerva Network profile describes them as the first Australian pair to win a Grand Prix title.⁠[7]

Four months later the pair also won the women’s doubles title at the Dutch Open.⁠[15][8][7]

In 2017 she won the women’s doubles title at the Oceania Championships with Setyana Mapasa and also took a silver medal in mixed doubles.⁠[2][3]

She has said that in 2017–18 she and Setyana Mapasa both went through many ups and downs and injuries that kept them from playing the Canada Open and from completing a full year of the BWF tour.⁠[15]

In November 2017 she and Setyana Mapasa played the Hong Kong Open; the pair were then ranked 32nd in the world in women’s doubles and were the top pair from the Oceania region.⁠[4][5]

In the interview she gave there she introduced herself in simple Mandarin.⁠[4]

At the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast the pair went in as first seeds in women’s doubles, lost their semi-final to an English pair and lost the bronze-medal match 2–0 to Reddy and Ponnappa of India, finishing fourth.⁠[1][2][16]

She went out at the quarter-final stage in the mixed doubles, and Australia went out of the mixed team event in the quarter-finals.⁠[1][10]

In July 2019 she and Setyana Mapasa, seeded seventh, won the YONEX Canada Open in Calgary, a BWF World Tour 100 event. In the round of 32 they lost the first game 21–23 to the Chinese pair Kang Yue and Xie Zhi Ting and then won 21–11, 21–16; they went on to beat a pair from Chinese Taipei and a second Chinese pair and received a walkover from a Canadian pair, and in the final they beat the fifth seeds, Chang Ye Na and Kim Hye Rin of Korea, 21–16, 21–14.⁠[17][18][15]

It was the pair’s second title at the event, after 2016, and it lifted them 11 places to No. 44 in the women’s doubles world ranking. She said, “We are just so happy to have shown some high-level badminton today,” and in a long social media post she thanked the team for its support and the fans who had supported them all the way.⁠[15][17]

In 2019 the pair also defended their women’s doubles title at the Oceania Championships, reached the final of the YONEX Waikato International 2019, won the YONEX-SUNRISE Nepal International Challenge 2019 and the YONEX/K&D Graphics International Challenge 2019, and finished second at the YONEX South Australia 2019.⁠[15][13]

In the same year she won the mixed doubles title at the Oceania Championships with Simon Leung, and the two reached the mixed doubles quarter-finals at both the Nepal International Challenge and the K&D Graphics International Challenge.⁠[3][7][13]

In 2020 she defended the women’s doubles title at the Oceania Championships with Setyana Mapasa and the mixed doubles title with Simon Leung.⁠[13][3]

She has recalled that by the start of 2020 she was more tired of travelling and being away than she had expected, and that she and her partner were about to begin an eight-week tour of tournaments through Europe and Asia when the Covid-19 lockdowns stopped it. She said that the break and the time at home were welcome at first, but that the uncertainty was very stressful: not knowing whether there would be any tournaments soon, having to train from home, and not knowing which tournament they were training for or even whether the Olympics would happen made it hard to stay motivated at training.⁠[13]

On May 18, 2020, Badminton Oceania published a Q+A with her, introducing her as a three-time Oceania women’s doubles champion and world No. 26. She had been chosen for the BWF’s Star Creation programme, which is designed to help grow the global popularity of badminton players and of the sport, and she said that she was in only the second group of five athletes to receive the opportunity. Her Instagram account then had 187,000 followers. She said that as an Australian she had to self-fund her career and that without a strong social media account she would not be able to fund all her tournaments and travel; her sponsors were Li-Ning and Slim Secrets.⁠[9]

In the Q+A she spoke about both sides of social media: it can bring connections, access and insights, and business opportunities with the rise of influencers, and it can too easily promote vanity, bullying, self-doubt and other negative mental-health outcomes; she spoke of people losing sleep over what others will think of them and said that developing a thick skin helps. She advised junior players to keep a personal account for personal or friend-oriented content apart from a public, more professional one, and to upload something about once a week. She added that getting content during training is often disruptive, that specific content takes a whole separate session, and that she sometimes asks someone who is resting to film a set.⁠[9]

She completed her undergraduate degree during the pandemic. She holds a Bachelor of Exercise Science from Victoria University; the official Tokyo Olympic athlete profile gives her studies as Exercise Science, Human Movement Studies at Victoria University in Footscray, and Badminton Oceania’s player profile also lists the University of London under education.⁠[13][6][1][3][8]

Several lockdowns in Victoria prevented her from travelling to New South Wales, where her doubles partner lived. In January 2021 she flew to Thailand for two tournaments, the first Badminton World Federation events held under a bubble system; with an early arrival, training, the tournaments and two weeks of quarantine on her return, she spent about five weeks in hotel rooms. In quarantine she set her own training schedule, waking at the same time each day, doing yoga and listening to podcasts while walking up and down the room.⁠[6]

The Australian Olympic Committee announced a four-player badminton team for the Tokyo Olympics: her, Wendy Chen, Setyana Mapasa and Simon Leung. She qualified through her international ranking in women’s doubles with Setyana Mapasa and in mixed doubles with Simon Leung, and all three were making their Olympic debut; the four players had more than 30 Oceania championship gold medals between them. She was 26 at the time.⁠[19][10]

She said, “it’s a dream come true,” and that the previous few months had been a roller coaster, so that securing her place in the team was an honour and also a relief. She later said that it became completely real only at the moment it was publicly announced, when she could properly celebrate and tell her friends and family; her mother had been her number one supporter from the day she picked up a racket and had also dreamed of her going to the Olympics.⁠[19][10][13]

In an SBS Chinese program published the same day she said that, as a Chinese-Australian, she hoped that Australia and China could enhance their understanding through sport, and she said, “Sport is a neutral ground.” She hoped to become a coach or physical trainer after retiring from professional badminton and said that she wanted to stay in badminton in some sort of leadership role; she added that as a doubles player she is always reliant on others, so it is good to have a plan B.⁠[6]

Asked about her expectations for Tokyo, she said that the pair did not really have any, because it was hard to know what level everyone was at without having played many of their opponents recently; they wanted to bring their best game and ideally to reach the quarter-finals and beyond. She said that she was looking forward to stepping on court and having some good matches, and that being around the best athletes from all around the world every day was an amazing and inspirational environment; she was excited to play Yuta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino in mixed doubles and to win her pool in women’s doubles.⁠[13]

The badminton competition of the Tokyo Olympics was scheduled for July 24 to August 2, 2021, at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza; she played women’s doubles and mixed doubles, and her national team coach was Stuart Brehaut.⁠[19][3]

In Group C of the women’s doubles she and Setyana Mapasa lost 0–2 to Lee Sohee and Shin Seungchan of Korea, lost 0–2 to Du Yue and Li Yin Hui of China and beat Maiken Fruergaard and Sara Thygesen of Denmark 2–1; they did not advance from the group and were ranked ninth. The Korean pair, the fourth seeds, had beaten them in three games at both the Gwangju Korea Masters and the VICTOR China Open during the Olympic qualification period in 2019.⁠[3][13][2]

In Group C of the mixed doubles she and Simon Leung lost 1–2 to Praveen Jordan and Melati Daeva Oktavianti of Indonesia, 0–2 to Yuta Watanabe and Arisa Higashino of Japan and 0–2 to Mathias Christiansen and Alexandra Boje of Denmark, and were ranked ninth. The Australian Olympic Committee’s profile, in its account of the mixed doubles, says that the pair beat the Danish duo Fruergaard and Thygesen 2–1; the official Tokyo results list those Danish players as her women’s doubles opponents and record three losses in mixed doubles.⁠[3][13][2]

Badminton Oceania wrote in August 2022 that Setyana Mapasa had retired after the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.⁠[16]

In 2022 she was a member of Australia’s Uber Cup team.⁠[1]

In an SBS Chinese program published on May 24, 2022, she spoke about the place of badminton in Australia. She said, “In Australia, badminton is [dominated by] Chinese-Australians or Indonesian and Malaysian players.” She put this down to parents: those who grew up playing the game want their children to play it too, while Australian parents who did not play tend to steer their children towards sports such as tennis or swimming; she added that many Australians, not having seen the high-intensity elite game, think of badminton as a slow backyard game.⁠[20]

Her profile on the talent-booking platform Pickstar states that in 2022 she started BADFIT, an online badminton fitness coaching business that helps clients around the world improve their fitness and badminton through her programs and coaching.⁠[21]

At the Birmingham Commonwealth Games she played women’s doubles with Wendy Chen, usually a singles player, in what was only their third tournament together. They had a comfortable passage through the first two rounds, beat the third seeds, Rachel Honderich and Kristen Tsai of Canada, in the quarter-finals, and lost in the semi-finals to the second seeds, Lauren Smith and Chloe Birch of England.⁠[16]

In the bronze-medal match at the NEC Arena they lost 15–21, 18–21 to the fourth seeds, Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Pullela of India, and finished fourth; a week earlier they had beaten the same Indian pair in the mixed team event. Commonwealth Games Australia’s profile describes the women’s doubles semi-final as Australia’s best result in Birmingham; she also reached the round of 16 in mixed doubles with Lin Ying Xiang.⁠[16][1]

In 2023 she won the mixed doubles title at the Mongolia International.⁠[8]

At the VICTOR Oceania Individual Championships in February 2024 she and Kenneth Choo, the top seeds in mixed doubles, beat the second seeds, Edward Lau and Shaunna Li of New Zealand, 21–11, 25–27, 21–14 in the final; Badminton Oceania wrote that it was “three from three” for the pair.⁠[22]

In the women’s doubles final she and Kaitlyn Ea, the second seeds, lost 18–21, 11–21 to the top seeds, Setyana Mapasa and Angela Yu.⁠[22]

Australia’s badminton team for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, announced at the Australian National Championships in Bendigo, consisted of Angela Yu, Setyana Mapasa and Tiffany Ho. Her athlete page on the Australian Olympic Committee’s website gives her Olympic history as Tokyo 2020.⁠[23][2]

At the 2025 VICTOR Oceania Badminton Championships she and Vincent Tao of New Zealand beat Edward Lau and Shaunna Li 21–19, 14–21, 21–18 in the final to win the mixed doubles title. She said, “We needed to drill back into our game plan because it got away from us a little bit.”⁠[24]

On the same day she and Angela Yu, the second seeds, beat Mimi Ngo and Maureen Clarissa Wijaya 21–10, 21–12 to win the women’s doubles title.⁠[24]

In the women’s doubles final of the VICTOR Oceania Championships 2026 she and Angela Yu beat Berry Ng and Amanda Ting of New Zealand 21–9, 21–9, a successful defence of their title.⁠[25]

In the final of the Oceania women’s team championship that followed in Auckland, Australia beat New Zealand 4–1 for a seventh successive title; she and Faye Huo beat Natalie Ting and Camellia Zhou in three games.⁠[26]

As of November 2026 the Senior Falcons list on Badminton Australia’s website places her in Tier 1 and gives her club as NBC (VIC). The Australian Olympic Committee’s profile gives her senior club as Play Badminton, and the official Tokyo Olympic athlete profile gives it as Play Badminton, Melbourne.⁠[27][2][3]

The South China Morning Post’s article from the 2017 Hong Kong Open states that her great-great grandfather, Kang Youwei, was a prominent scholar from Guangdong who led the movements to establish a constitutional monarchy in the late Qing dynasty. In it she says, “I know my great-great grand father was a famous person though he passed away long time ago,” and, “He is a pretty inspiring person because of the kind of things he did in China.” The article states that her mother gave her the family history when she was young and that she learned more through numerous interviews with mainland media.⁠[4]

Another South China Morning Post article states that several years earlier she had discovered that she is a fifth-generation descendant of Kang Youwei.⁠[5]

The SBS Chinese page of June 28, 2021, calls her the “great-granddaughter” of Kang Youwei. In the program she said that her father was her Chinese link and came from China, that her mother and other relatives spoke about the ancestry as she was growing up, and that her mother would be proud to tell people in Chinese restaurants that they were related to Kang Youwei. She said that knowing that she had ancestors who accomplished many great things had helped her with her sport and her aspirations, and she spoke of Kang Youwei and his daughter, “everything that they’ve done for China and overcoming the norm.”⁠[6]

The official Tokyo Olympic athlete profile states that her great-great grandfather was Kang Youwei and quotes her as saying that since she was young her mother had described him as being like a revolutionist who “really helped change China with his unique thinking.” The Minerva Network profile states that she learned at a young age that her late father was a descendant of “Kang You Wei.”⁠[3][7]

The Australian Olympic Committee’s profile states that, while she was competing at a tournament as a 16-year-old, it was revealed that she was a descendant of Kang Youwei, a reformer of the Qing dynasty; she was in China at the time, where badminton is one of the most popular sports, and her ancestral links gained her an army of supporters overnight. In May 2020 she said that her social media following first took off when she was 16 and the Chinese media found out that she was related to “Kang You Wei,” which also brought new sponsorship opportunities. She has also said that at first she did not realise how big it was, and that it was her Chinese coach who disclosed her identity to the media in China.⁠[2][9][6]

At the time of the Tokyo Olympics she lived in Melbourne and spoke English and Mandarin; she has taken Mandarin lessons through an online school, and in June 2021 she said, “I had only been learning Chinese for about three years online.”⁠[3][7][6]

She has said, “Both my coach and my doctor were very supportive when I decided to become a vegetarian, or rather 90 per cent vegan.” She said that there are many myths surrounding veganism, that people are especially concerned about protein, and that vegans can get enough protein and other nutrients.⁠[5]

She is 170 cm tall and plays right-handed, and her nickname is “Gron.” She has named Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei as her heroes and Viktor Axelsen, Serena WilliamsSerena WilliamsSerena Williams is a tennis player, entrepreneur, and investor who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles and four Olympic gold medals. She founded Serena Ventures and has taken part in ownership of sports ventures such as Los Angeles Golf Club. In 2022 she announced a shift in focus toward family and business, and in 2026 she returned to professional competition; that same year she explained in an interview that her investment business had moved to the Starfire Ventures brand.Open the full entry and Melissa Wu as her idols; her stated ambition before the Tokyo Olympics was to win a medal at the 2020 Olympic Games and at the world championships.⁠[8][3]

She has said that before a match she eases the tension by joking around with coaches or players, and that if she cannot sleep she tries meditating or calls friends.⁠[13]

The accounts differ on the number of her Oceania titles: the Minerva Network profile says that she was Oceania women’s doubles champion from 2014 to 2019 and Oceania mixed doubles champion in 2019; SBS Chinese called her an eight-time Oceania champion in May 2022; and Commonwealth Games Australia’s profile says that she has won eight Oceania events, including four consecutive women’s doubles titles with Setyana Mapasa from 2017 to 2020.⁠[7][20][1]

She has also won gold with Australian teams at the Oceania team championships: the women’s team event in 2018 and 2020 and the mixed team event in 2019.⁠[3]

The Australian Olympic Committee’s profile states that her pairing with Setyana Mapasa rose as high as eighth in the world in women’s doubles; she holds one BWF World Tour title, two BWF Grand Prix titles and seven BWF International Challenge titles.⁠[2][11]

Her results at the world championships are: the last 32 in women’s doubles in 2013 (Guangzhou), 2014 (Copenhagen) and 2019 (Basel) and the last 64 in 2017 (Glasgow); and in mixed doubles the last 64 in 2014 and the last 32 in 2019.⁠[3]

In 2018 she played the Uber Cup in Bangkok with the Australian women’s team, which went out in the group stage; the Australian team placed 15th–16th at the Sudirman Cup in 2017 (Gold Coast) and 23rd–24th in 2019 (Nanning).⁠[3]

A South China Morning Post article describes a week she spent in Beijing, training with the Chinese national badminton team and attending meetings and a gala hosted by her sponsor Li-Ning; she and Setyana Mapasa were then ranked 36th in the world in women’s doubles.⁠[5]

During that visit China Central Television (CCTV) invited her to film a speech about her great-great-grandfather and her badminton career; she said that she had managed to read the first page of the speech in Chinese and that it felt great. She said, “I am extremely proud of my Chinese heritage”; her Chinese teacher sat beside her during the interview. By June 2021 she had been interviewed by China Central Television and had shared her experience with an audience of hundreds of millions in a 15-minute speech in English and Chinese.⁠[5][6]

She has said that the attention she received in China opened many opportunities for her to promote badminton in Australia and gave her more opportunities to get sponsors and to travel; she wants to help promote Australia as a badminton nation and is committed to promoting the sport in Australia through participation. She said, “Badminton is a great workout.”⁠[6]

Her Pickstar profile states that she has experience in television hosting, public speaking, school clinics, brand ambassadorships, modelling, content creation and commentating, that she has commentated on the World Tour for the Badminton World Federation, presented for multiple schools, run coaching clinics and led workouts, and that she has been a brand ambassador for Li-Ning, Nature’s Care, Nature’s Way, Xiamen Airlines, Slim Secrets, Kumpoo and Capital Alliance. In November 2026 the page showed 272,000 followers on Instagram, 145,000 on Facebook and 5,800 on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry.⁠[21]

Badminton Victoria lists her on its Ambassadors page, and the Minerva Network’s website carries a profile of her.⁠[28][7]

Badminton Victoria: Official website: https://www.badmintonvic.com.au/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]

Badminton Australia: Official website: https://www.badminton.org.au/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gronya-somerville (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgurFKiVO_PEJVvzop7xFzQ (opens in a new window).⁠[3][21]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/gronyasomerville/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2][3][9]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/gronyasomervilleofficial (opens in a new window).⁠[2][3]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@gronyaaa (opens in a new window).⁠[2]