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.

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