French Lebrun brothers defeated in Olympic table tennis semi-finals against China
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00:00Now, earlier today, France failed to get past China in the table tennis men's semi-final.
00:04Selina Sykes was at the match and filed this update.
00:10They knew it would be an extremely tough task to get past China
00:14with two Olympic champions and a world champion in their ranks.
00:18And the Lebrun brothers and Simon Gauzy gave it their all.
00:22But China continued to prove to be unbeatable
00:26as they beat the French in straight sets to qualify for their fifth consecutive Olympic final in the table tennis.
00:33It was Alexis Lebrun and Simon Gauzy up in the doubles first.
00:37They started off strong, but they were overwhelmed by the Chinese as they beat them three games to zero.
00:44In the second set, it was up to 17-year-old Félix Lebrun to turn things around
00:50in a rematch of his semi-final match against Fen Zhendong,
00:54who went on to win the Olympic gold in the individual event.
00:58After being thrashed in the opening game, Félix looked riled up for the rest of their set.
01:04He looked much closer against the Chinese and fought back eventually to get the third game.
01:12And there was a marathon fourth game, which eventually Zhendong went on to win 14-16.
01:19So Alexis Lebrun knew that he had to deliver to keep the French in it against the world number one,
01:25Wang Chuqin, the world number one, and did win the opening game.
01:29And he took it to the world number one, but eventually also lost three games to one.
01:37That means that France will now face Japan for the bronze medal on Friday morning,
01:43while China will be facing Sweden for gold.