Alexis Lebrun: Ranked 1,050th, Then He Beat the World Number One

In January 2022, Alexis Lebrun was ranked 1,050th in the world. Fifteen months later, he beat the reigning world number one.

That result, not just being the older Lebrun brother, is the specific credential worth leading with. Here’s the match, the ranking climb behind it, and where his career stands now.

Beating the World Number One

The scoreline was 11-7, 8-11, 11-5, 5-11, 11-9. Alexis Lebrun, ranked world number 22 at the time, beat Fan Zhendong, the reigning world number one, in the quarterfinal of WTT Champions Macao in April 2023.

Immediately afterward, he was quoted saying, roughly translated, “I’ve just beaten the world number one, now I need to beat the Olympic champion.” Fan held both titles at the time, which made the line literal rather than a figure of speech.

Multiple independent match reports confirm the same context: Lebrun was the first European player to beat Fan Zhendong since Dimitrij Ovtcharov’s own 3-2 win in October 2022, six months earlier. Ovtcharov is also profiled on this site.

Two Europeans, Six Months Apart

So it’s worth putting the two results side by side. Ovtcharov’s win came from an established veteran already fourteen years into his senior career. Lebrun’s came from a teenager who’d been ranked outside the world’s top 1,000 barely a year earlier.

Both wins carry weight precisely because they’re rare. Fan Zhendong doesn’t lose to European opposition often, and beating him as the reigning world number one is a different proposition than an ordinary tour win.

His Own Record

Beyond the Macao result, Lebrun’s honors list is substantial in its own right.

The 2024 European Championships gold, beating Benedikt Duda 4-0 in the final, and the doubles title with Felix the same year, show a player producing real results independent of the Macao upset.

Playing Alongside, and Against, His Brother

So Alexis and Felix Lebrun’s careers overlap directly, not just as a family footnote. The two reached world number one in doubles together by the end of 2024. In 2025, Felix beat Alexis in the French National singles final.

Both grew up under the same family table tennis background: father Stephane reached number 7 in France and won a French doubles championship, and uncle Christophe Legout competed at three Olympics for France. But the brothers play different games, Alexis on a standard shakehand grip against Felix’s rare reverse penhold style.

Equipment

Lebrun plays an A. Lebrun Krypto Carbon blade, his own signature model, with Hybrid K3 max rubber, the same rubber Felix uses, on a different signature blade.

Both brothers reaching the point of having their own named blade models is itself a marker of how far each has come. Signature equipment tends to follow sustained top-level results, not a single tournament, which puts both blades in the same category as a concrete outcome of each brother’s own career rather than a marketing exercise.

A Family Business, Sustained Across Three Generations

So the Lebrun family’s table tennis lineage is worth stating plainly, since it runs deeper than a passing mention of “his father also played.”

Uncle Christophe Legout competed at three separate Olympic Games for France. Father Stephane reached number 7 in the country and won a national doubles title of his own. Two brothers, one generation later, have now combined for an Olympic medal, a world number one doubles ranking, and a win over a reigning world number one.

That’s not a family with one standout generation and one lucky follow-up. It’s a sustained pattern across three generations of the same family competing at elite levels of the same sport.

So Alexis’s own chapter in that pattern is the Macao win specifically, the single most concrete, checkable result in a family record built otherwise on team medals and doubles rankings shared between two or more people on the same scoresheet, and it remains the clearest evidence of what he can do entirely on his own.

What a 1,050-to-22 Climb Actually Means

So it’s worth being precise about what that ranking jump represents, since raw numbers like 1,050 and 22 can blur together without context.

A ranking outside the world’s top 1,000 generally means a player hasn’t yet broken into the tournament circuit that awards meaningful ranking points, still working through lower-tier events and qualification rounds. World number 22 is a fully established position on the senior tour, playing main draws at the sport’s biggest events.

Covering that distance in roughly fifteen months means stringing together consistent results across dozens of matches, not one breakthrough tournament. The Macao win over Fan Zhendong was the visible headline. The climb that put him in position to play that match at all is the less visible part of the same story.

Doubles Chemistry, Singles Rivalry

So the doubles partnership with Felix deserves more detail than a single mention. Reaching world number one as a pair requires the kind of court-coverage coordination that doesn’t happen by accident between two players who happen to be related.

Doubles in table tennis requires players to alternate shots, meaning each player only touches every second ball. Positioning has to account for where the partner will be standing next, not just where the ball is going. Two brothers who grew up hitting together from childhood have a specific advantage there that unrelated pairings have to build over years.

That same familiarity cuts the other way in singles. When Felix beat Alexis in the 2025 French National final, both players were drawing on years of knowledge about exactly how the other one plays under pressure. Neither had the element of surprise available against an unfamiliar opponent.

Where He Sits Behind His Brother, and Why That’s Incomplete

So by ranking alone, world number 9 against Felix’s world number 2, Alexis reads as the clearly secondary Lebrun. That comparison misses what actually makes his own record distinctive.

Felix’s signature result is an age record, the youngest Olympic medalist in the sport’s history. Alexis’s signature result is a form of underdog-beats-champion story that has nothing to do with age and everything to do with a specific, dramatic ranking climb. They’re different kinds of achievement, not the same achievement at different scales.

So treating Alexis as simply “the other Lebrun” undersells a result, beating a reigning world number one as a rapidly rising 19-year-old, that plenty of career players never achieve at any age or ranking.

What Happened After Macao

So a single signature win doesn’t guarantee what comes next, and it’s worth checking whether the Macao result held up as a genuine level shift rather than a one-off upset.

The record since says it held. A European Championships singles gold in 2024, an Olympic team bronze the same year, and a continued climb to world number 9 by September 2026 all point at a player who settled into the level the Macao win suggested, rather than reverting afterward.

So the honest read is that beating Fan Zhendong wasn’t a ceiling. It was closer to a marker of a rise that was already underway, confirmed by results that followed rather than standing alone as an isolated highlight.

So the full picture, ranking climb, the win itself, and everything since, reads as one continuous rise rather than a single lucky afternoon in Macao. That’s the version of his career worth remembering, not just the one match that made headlines.

Alexis Lebrun Questions, Answered

The Short Version

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