The 17-year-old table tennis player beat the Brazilian Hugo Calderano, who eliminated his older brother Alexis in the last 16, in four sets on Sunday. He thus becomes the second Frenchman in history to reach an Olympic podium in singles.
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“Fefe”as he is now unanimously nicknamed, did not tremble. Despite his 17 years, the French table tennis player Félix Lebrun won the bronze medal in individual table tennis at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Sunday, August 4, in an Arena Paris Sud that never stopped pushing him.
Paris 2024 – Table tennis: the fantastic point won by Félix Lebrun
In this small final, the world number five faced the number 4 seed, the Brazilian Hugo Calderano, who eliminated Alexis Lebrun in the 8th finals. The Montpellier player did not hold back from avenging his older brother, present in the stands, by winning, without much difficulty, the first set (11-6) before battling every point of the second set (12-10) and concluding with two rigorously fought sets.
The Frenchman thus masterfully recovered from his disappointment, after his defeat in the semi-finals on Friday against the world number 4, the Chinese Fan Zhendong. He is the first Frenchman, since Jean-Philippe Gatien in 1992 in Barcelona (silver), to climb onto a table tennis podium at the Olympic Games in singles. This is the third medal for French ping pong at the Olympic Games, after Gatien’s silver in 1992 in singles, and the bronze of the duo Jean-Philippe Gatien-Patrick Chila in doubles in 2000 in Sydney.