Out in the semi-finals: France’s table tennis favorite Felix Lebrun (r.) lost to the Chinese Fan Zhedong.
Photo: imago/Liu Xu
A 17-year-old blonde, lanky guy with glasses has become one of the French fans’ favorites at these games, even if he has now been thwarted on the way to the gold medal he dreamed of: Felix Lebrun from Montpellier lost his semi-final game on Friday in the thunderous Paris South Arena 4 against Fan Zhedong from the great guard of Chinese world-class players – without winning a single set.
In the end the scoreboard read 4:0, 11:8, 11:6, 11:7, 11:5 in sets. The declassification only lasted a good half hour. »Today Fan was better than me, he played fantastically. I wasn’t that bad, but if I want to beat him, I have to do my best,” said Lebrun. “That wasn’t the case today.”
6,400 fans in the hall sang warmly to Edith Piaf for a big match by her new darling: “Non, je ne regrette rien!” (No, I don’t regret anything!) they intoned with fervor, for those less sure of the lyrics the song ran line after line line on the scoreboard with. When France’s table tennis prodigy strode into the arena, their feet stomped. His story is too good: Together with his brother Alexis, who was eliminated in the round of 16, the young man from the south of France conquered the table tennis world, initially trained by his father Stéphane Lebrun, a former top player.
After his extremely strong performances, Lebrun self-confidently declared the final as his goal, and only a few points separate him from his competitor Fan in the world rankings: The 27-year-old Fan is fourth, Lebrun, the best non-Chinese, is fifth. But things didn’t go well for the tall blonde from Montpellier in this semi-final, perhaps best of all in the first set, when he was at least within reach of winning the set at 8:7. But then Fan managed a lucky point to equalize and finally won the first set with his powerful attacking game. “If I had won the first set, the game might have been different,” Lebrun mused later, “but today it just didn’t go that way.”
Fan had adapted perfectly to Lebrun’s strength: the penholder grip. This racket position is extremely rare in elite table tennis. Of the 172 table tennis players at the Paris Games, only six hold the racket like Lebrun does: He places his thumb and index finger around the handle of the racket as if he were holding a pen. This makes it more flexible in the wrist and can generate even more spin. Some Penholder players have already become Olympic champions, most recently the Chinese Ma Lin at the Beijing Games in 2008. Since that year, the individual Olympic champion has always come from China.
Most penholder players are vulnerable on the backhand, but not Lebrun. His backhand is his strength, the competition fears him for it. In the Olympic semi-finals, Lebrun made an unusually large number of avoidable errors, especially with his forehand.
His competitor was completely different: point by point, Fan Zhedong moved closer to the final with his consistent attacking game, the Frenchman shook his head in disbelief every time he missed a smash. At the beginning of the fourth set he fought back against defeat one last time: he was leading 4-1 before Fan Zhedong made short work of it. He converted the second match point to make it 11:5.
The Chinese himself was a little amazed at how easily he walked through this semi-final. »The result was unexpected for me. I thought every game would be as tough as my 4-3 win in the quarterfinals yesterday.” When asked how he adapted so well to Lebrun’s penholder grip, he referred to the coaches: “China’s team has a lot of experience . No matter what types of players we’re up against, we have plenty of resources and players that can help us find solutions. You have to implement the plan. I did that today.”
Anything other than missing the final would have been a disappointment for his table tennis-obsessed home country. Fan already enjoys superstar status at home: In April 2023, he had to call on his fans to “be sensible and boycott fan culture” after someone broke into his hotel room in Beijing and stole his underwear. In 2021, he was almost overwhelmed by a crowd at an airport. He posted on the Internet: “I beg my fans to allow me to be an ordinary person!”
In the final on Sunday, Fan will face Swede Truls Moregard. But before this big final, France’s table tennis favorite can compete with the Brazilian Hugo Calderano in the game for third place. On Friday he said he was glad he now had time to prepare for the final match. »I have to try to win this last game! A medal at the Olympics is still my dream.«
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