They have resumed training but have not yet returned to tournaments, which should not be long, with a resumption planned for the end of September for the Grand Smash organized in China from the 26th. In the meantime, the inseparable Lebrun brothers, Félix and Alexis, will parade this Saturday afternoon with nearly 300 athletes to conclude this enchanted interlude of the Games in style, on the Champs-Élysées.
“We can’t wait to parade, we’re going to have a great time,” enthused Alexis, the eldest, on RMC, who concluded with his younger brother and Simon Gauzy a historic fortnight for French table tennis by winning a very fine team bronze medal.
As expected, the exceptional performances of the Lebrun brothers, associated with the brilliant Simon Gauzy, author of a huge match against the Chinese Liang Jingkun (4th) this week, in Macao, have revived an interest in table tennis with a boom in licensees.
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“We don’t feel very far away”
“It’s really a huge source of pride, of course,” admitted Félix Lebrun. “We’ve seen a lot of new members in our club in Montpellier. You have to push the boundaries a bit, it’s really nice. For my part, seeing players start with the penholder grip (his signature grip) makes me happy, and if I can help them in Montpellier, I’m going to try to do it.”
Double medallist (bronze individually) at these Paris Games, Félix Lebrun will want to consolidate his position (5th) as China’s first challenger and contest this supremacy of an empire on ping pong.
“We don’t feel very far away, but on the other hand, it’s very hard to catch up with them,” says Félix Lebrun. “It’s this little detail, it’s the hardest in the end. We still need a lot of training, we know that they are also training to stay ahead, it’s going to be the challenge of a lifetime.” How can we manage to shake them up, or even beat them, more regularly in the long term? By drawing on their own training methods?
“We are already wondering how to beat them. For now, it might be interesting to go on training courses to confront them more regularly, but our philosophy is not to copy them,” warns Alexis Lebrun. “Because they have more resources, there are more of them. We think that if we try to copy them, we will never be able to match them.”
- RMC Sport
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