France has not brought home a medal in table tennis since the Sydney Olympics in 2000 when Jean-Philippe Gatien and Patrick Chila won bronze in men's doubles. Monday evening, in the majestic Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, Simon Gauzy, Emmanuel Lebesson and Alexandre Cassin were too fair against the three best Chinese worlds, even if they sometimes did better than resist. "
We knew very well that it would be an extremely difficult match, we can't do much better on the planet
" than the Chinese, but "
we have real possibilities to progress
», Confided Emmanuel Lebesson.
It was the last chance for the Blues, the women's team made up of Prithika Pavade, Stéphanie Loeuillette and Jia Nan Yuan, having been eliminated in the morning in the round of 16.
To discover
The full Olympic program
The Olympic medal table
In the individual tournament, Gauzy was not unworthy in 8th against the Chinese Ma Long, from whom he took a set, while Lebesson was eliminated in the third round by another Chinese Fan Zhendong. Among the ladies, Pavade, 17 on Monday, was out in the first round and Jia Nan Yuan in the third. Promise kept on the other hand for the mixed doubles, composed of Lebesson and Yuan: in this new Olympic competition, the French pair went to the match for the bronze medal, which they lost to, again, to the Chinese, the world number one Lin Yu Ju and Cheng I-Ching.
During these ten days in Tokyo, "
our French produced good and beautiful table tennis, and which score, since all the matches that we could win, we won them
", welcomed the national technical director of the French Federation, Jean-Nicolas Barelier. As for the matches against the best ranked, "
we managed to hook our opponents,
" he added. "
On the mixed doubles, there is a real performance (...) Our pair being young in terms of common table tennis life, that augurs a lot of hopes
" for Paris-2014, estimated the DTN, satisfied with "
now reap the fruits of the work
”of the last twenty years.