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Sun Yingsha loses 1–2 to Alexis Lebrun in a no-handicap practice match
孙颖莎1-2不敌大勒布伦
China’s top women’s table tennis player took on France’s world No. 8 man in Montpellier, settling a challenge first floated nearly a year ago.
In short
During the WTT Champions tournament in Montpellier, France, women’s world No. 2 Sun Yingsha played a best-of-three practice match against France’s Alexis Lebrun, the men’s world No. 8. Lebrun won 2–1. Sun turned down a points handicap, so every game started at 0–0. The friendly settled a challenge made at the Mixed Team World Cup in Chengdu in December 2025.
What happened
The match was not part of the tournament. It took place behind the scenes at WTT Champions Montpellier, one of the World Table Tennis tour’s invitation events, while both players were in the French city to compete. France’s sports daily L’Équipe reported the meeting, and Chinese media followed with the result: Lebrun won two games to one.
Men’s and women’s table tennis are played separately at professional level, and men generally hit with more speed and spin, so a close contest between a top woman and a top-ten man drew wide attention in China.[2][3]
A challenge from Chengdu
According to Modern Express, a newspaper in Jiangsu, citing L’Équipe, the idea came from China’s men’s world No. 1 Wang Chuqin during an exchange between the Chinese and French teams at the Mixed Team World Cup in Chengdu on 5 December 2025. Lebrun’s coach, Nathanaël Molin, recalled that Lebrun offered to give Sun one or two points a game, and Wang said it should be three or four.
When the match was finally played in Montpellier, Sun declined any handicap and the games started level. Chinese coverage focused on the fact that she still took a game.[3]
Who are the players?
Sun Yingsha is one of China’s most popular athletes; she was the women’s world No. 1 at the time of the Chengdu event. Alexis Lebrun is the elder of two French brothers who both play at the top level, which is why Chinese fans call him “Big Lebrun” (大勒布伦) and his younger brother Félix “Little Lebrun”.
In the tournament itself, Félix Lebrun lost to China’s Zhou Qihao in the round of 16, and Sun was due to play her compatriot Wang Manyu in the women’s quarter-finals.[2][3][4]
Sources
- Baidu Hot Search (1 November 2026, in Chinese) · accessed 1 Nov 2026
- L’Équipe, Quand Alexis Lebrun défie la n°2 mondiale Sun Yingsha après un pari lancé il y a un an (via Titres Presse, in French) · accessed 1 Nov 2026
- Modern Express, Sun Yingsha and Lebrun play out a challenge made a year ago (30 October 2026, via NetEase, in Chinese) · accessed 1 Nov 2026
- SportMag, French players out at WTT Champions Montpellier (31 October 2026, in French) · accessed 1 Nov 2026
Picked from Baidu’s public hot-search list and checked against the reports above. Suggest a correction