Lily Zhang, a six-time U.S. national table tennis champion, four-time Olympian and Palo Alto High School graduate, will appear as the special guest at Mayor Vicki Veenker's State of the City address Wednesday, Aug. 19, at Paly's Performing Arts Center.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with public comment, followed by the mayor's address and a reception. The event is free, with RSVP requested but not required, according to the city's weekly update. A live YouTube stream is available for those who can't attend. As we reported Aug. 12, bike and complimentary vehicle parking are available at Paly.

Zhang, 30, has competed at London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, reaching a career-best round of 16 in women's singles at the Paris Games. She is the top-ranked U.S. women's table tennis player.

Her roots in Palo Alto run deep. Zhang grew up on the Stanford campus, where her father was a mathematics professor and where a laundromat table tennis table sparked a lifelong obsession. By age 7 she was training with Dennis Davis, president and head coach of the Palo Alto Table Tennis Club, then located at Cubberley Community Center. By 12, she became the youngest player ever named to the U.S. Women's Team.

"I just fell in love with the game," Zhang told CNN Sports in January. "I dove in headfirst."

At 16, she traveled to the 2012 London Olympics as the youngest table tennis player in the competition. Two years later, she won bronze at the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing, becoming the first American table tennis player to medal at any Olympic-level event.

Zhang graduated from Paly in 2014 before heading to UC Berkeley. She now plays for the Bay Area Blasters in Major League Table Tennis and in December became the first woman to reach No. 1 in the league's power rankings.

Her next goal: the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which would mark a fifth Games appearance.

Wednesday's event is not Zhang's first civic cameo in Palo Alto. In June 2019, she helped christen two new ping pong tables in Lytton Plaza alongside then-Mayor Eric Filseth for Olympic Day.