Alexis Lebrun, long doubtful, advances to the first round of the World Table Tennis Championships

He was uncertain until the day before this first day of competition, but Alexis Lebrun finally entered the fray at the 2025 World Table Tennis Championships. On Saturday, May 17, in Doha (Qatar), the eldest of the Lebrun siblings won (11-6, 11-2, 11-1, 11-6) against the Togolese Kokou Fanny, ^181st player in the world. Félix Lebrun easily overcame (11-7, 11-5, 11-9, 11-8) the Slovak Lubomir Pistej, ^146th in the WTT rankings. On Sunday, the two brothers will continue with the doubles, where they are world number 1.

More than the condition of his right little finger – operated on March 29 for a fracture of the fifth metacarpal – it was Alexis's ability to line up in sufficient shape and not risk a secondary injury that questioned the French team staff before these World Championships. On March 27, Alexis Lebrun injured himself by repeatedly hitting the table, after losing in the final of the French championships against his younger brother.

An angry gesture that forced him to withdraw from the WTT tournament in Incheon (South Korea) and, more importantly, from the World Cup in Macau (China) in mid-April. He was in sparkling form at the time, having won, among other things, the European Championships at the end of 2024 and the European Top 16 at the start of the year. Despite his absence from the circuit, Alexis gained a place in the rankings, taking advantage of the fall of German Patrick Franziska (lost six places) to become world number 8, two places behind Félix Lebrun.

A week before the start of the world championships, Alexis Lebrun looked back on the various stages of his recovery. He spent the first three weeks "working physically, without a racket" while taking advantage of this break to attend physiotherapy sessions to "treat tendonitis that had been lingering for two years." Working with his mental coach—working on "visualization" —he tried to "keep the sensations and rhythm going" by getting "as close as possible to a 'ping' workout," which he had been deprived of.

In a second phase, he incorporated a touch of racket-in-hand play, "touching the ball very gently." Before finally getting back to serious things at the beginning of May, during a training course at the Centre for Resources, Expertise and Sports Performance (Creps) in Nantes, with his teammates from the French team. "You have to go gradually, the risk is not on the hand, which is more or less consolidated, it's about getting the body used to playing at high intensity again," he explains.

France coach Nathanaël Molin advocated caution and assumed he would wait until the last minute before deciding whether or not to field the French number 2 in Qatar – in consultation with the main player concerned. "The playing sensations are what they are. He's not training normally, but he's training ," he confided eight days before the start of the World Championships. "We'll give ourselves time to make the decision at the last minute, but we'll follow the process as if he were playing."

The Lebrun brothers' mentor did not believe in an intermediate scenario, such as the possibility of favoring doubles with his little brother to the detriment of singles: "I can't see myself asking him that. Knowing the guy, if he can play, he plays..."

Speaking to the press, Alexis Lebrun insisted on his strategy of taking " no risks" for the rest of his career and simply returning "as best as possible." It's impossible for the 21-year-old table tennis player to set performance goals before the start of the tournament. If he has the opportunity, ambitions may come from accumulating matches and victories. If they each win their first three matches, the Lebrun brothers will challenge each other in the round of 16.