Winners in doubles in Japan this November 23 for the WTT Finals, the Montpellier residents are completing an exceptional year which saw them win medals at the World Team Championships, at the Paris Olympics and also an individual European title. Insatiable!
With the WTT finals, the curtain fell this weekend in Japan on an exceptional international year for brothers Alexis and Félix Lebrun and all of French table tennis. A look back at the five great acts of this great vintage.
1. Team silver at the Worlds
In February, the French men’s team, made up of Félix, Alexis Lebrun and Simon Gauzy, reached the final of the World Team Championships in Busan, where they faced the queen nation of the discipline, China. Largely beaten (3-0), the three compatriots nevertheless equaled the best French result in the event, which dated from 1997.
Great promises before the Games. In the women’s category, Prithika Pavade, Charlotte Lutz and Jia Nan Yuan, also beaten by the Chinese, returned from South Korea with bronze around their necks, a performance which had not been achieved for 33 years.
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You’ll never guess what the Lebrun brothers are nicknamed in China, where they are stars
2. Paris Olympics: Félix bursts onto the screen
Olympic Games and tanned summer The tricolor ping remained before the Olympics on a distant memory, that of a bronze medal gleaned in 2000, in Sydney, in doubles by Jean-Philippe Gatien and Patrick Chila. The last one in singles? The same Gatien’s money in Barcelona in 1992.
Félix Lebrun was then far from being born. But in Paris, the young 17-year-old table tennis player revealed himself a little more to the general public, by adorning himself with bronze individually a few days before offering victory for third place to the trio he formed with his brother and Simon Gauzy against Japan (3-2). A double that takes the two Montpellier table tennis players into another media dimension.
3. Euro: Alexis’s good day
When one Lebrun hides another. In Linz at the European Championships, Félix Lebrun, among the big favorites, collapsed in the quarter-finals of the competition, knocked down by the German Benedikt Duda. Alexis, 21, then takes over and rushes to win the title after a perfect day, started with the doubles coronation of the two brothers. Unplayable, the elder of the two brothers borders on perfection in his game to disgust Duda in the final and win his first major title.
From Austria, the Blues will also leave with a bronze medal, won by the pair Simon Gauzy and Prithika Pavade.
4. Felix prophet in Montpellier
In their land of birth and training in Hérault, the Lebrun brothers were received as stars for the first WTT Champions at the Montpellier Arena, a second level tournament on the international circuit. After offering their public a fratricidal duel – which turned in favor of the younger brother – in the quarter-finals, Félix Lebrun flew through the rest of the competition and became the first Frenchman to win in a Champions. One more step in his crazy rise, which brings him to 4th place in the world.
5. WTT Finals: double conclusion
In Japan, this month of November, the Lebruns are seeing double. Coming out of the singles entry in Fukuoka, for their last WTT tournament of the season, Alexis and Félix Lebrun closed their year on Saturday with a final celebration, by winning in the doubles final of the WTT Finals, after beating in style (3 -2) the Japanese Hiroto Shinozuka and Shunsuke Togami. A final title synonymous with world No. 1 in the discipline. A year of madness that calls for more? The Montpellier duo will inevitably be eagerly awaited in 2025.
Also read:
WTT Finals: the Lebrun brothers make history a little more by becoming world number one in table tennis
