“I never lose, I either win or I learn.”
Nelson Mandela's formula suits perfectly the weekend that Félix Lebrun has just spent at his home, near Montpellier, during the French Championships which confirmed the tremendous enthusiasm surrounding him and his older brother Alexis.
A popular fervor confirmed by the father of the two French table tennis players, Stéphane Lebrun, in an interview with Le Parisien:
“We knew that the organization of the competition at home was going to bring people.
When Alexis and Félix walk in the street or go to a restaurant, they are constantly arrested.
They were the ones who attracted the audience and filled the room.
We could even have had hundreds of additional spectators.”
To discover
Paris 2024: the map of Olympic sites
With 3,000 spectators at each session, the FDI Stadium was full over the weekend, offering a fantastic showcase for French
“ping”
four months before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris.
The French Championships were all the more attractive as they were the scene of formidable confrontations, particularly in the men's draw with two semi-finals, each going to the end of seven rounds.
With emotion, too, as with Simon Gauzy, defeated by Félix Lebrun at the end of an extraordinary duel 11 points to 9 in the final set.
And then there was this final, this third consecutive coronation for Alexis Lebrun and Félix's tears which flowed freely.
Once again, in the Lebrun siblings, the birthright will have prevailed.
Without this being bad news in view of the 2024 Olympics, quite the contrary…
Playing matches like that in front of so many people, with only people I know, can only help me for the future.
Felix Lebrun
“I think it can teach me things, yes,”
explained the player, only 17 years old, it should be remembered, to our colleagues at
Midi Libre
.
“Between sets I had tears in my eyes, I felt taken aback, he was only giving me planes, I wasn't playing very well.
I told myself that it was going too quickly and that I was going to look ridiculous, so it wasn't easy.
Succeeding in coming back was truly something beautiful.
Playing matches like that in front of so many people, with only people I know, can only help me for the future.”
And inevitably the gaze turns towards the Arena Paris Sud in Paris, scene of the table tennis competition during the next Olympic high mass.
In just a few weeks, Félix Lebrun experienced a World Team Championship final, logically lost to China, one at the Smash in Singapore – the equivalent of a Grand Slam tournament for the discipline – also finished on a defeat against the new world number 1 Wang Chuqin, and now that in the final of the French Championships.
A hat-trick of setbacks, therefore, but which should absolutely not make us forget the journey accomplished to reach this stage of the competition each time.
A sign of his consistency at the highest level.
Also a symbol of his progress, which today allows him to rank 5th in the world, behind four Chinese players, two of whom will not be able to participate in the Games individually, which can only open up the field of possibilities a little more for this young player whose meteoric emergence at the highest level should not make us forget his experience, which is still meager.
Barely time to dry her tears...
Simply, Félix Lebrun now has to take the time to digest and swallow his tears:
“It’s true that it was a difficult match on an emotional level for me.
I think I experienced one of the toughest matches in terms of emotions.
I'm going to try to make do, to reenergize myself.
I'm still proud to have come back into the match... And then I'm happy for him because he is French champion here at home.
But here I would have liked it to be me.”
Even if time, the French number 1 will hardly have any, he who will already fly to South Korea and Incheon, where an important tournament awaits him to consolidate his place as number 1... in the world, outside China .
Which will perhaps be worth gold in Paris, or failing that, bronze or silver, who knows.