Alexis Lebrun Upsets World No. 1 in ITTF World Cup Macao Debut

Alexis Lebrun debuted at the 2026 ITTF Men's World Cup in Macao with a win on March 31, adding the sport's flagship individual championship to a city résumé already bookmarked by one of table tennis's more stunning upsets.

That upset came at WTT Champions Macao 2023, where Lebrun, then 19, beat World No. 1 Fan Zhendong 3-2 in the quarterfinals at the Tap Seac Multisport Pavilion: 11-7, 8-11, 11-5, 5-11, 11-9. The win made Lebrun the first European player to defeat Fan since Dimitrij Ovtcharov at the WTT Cup Finals Xinxiang the previous October.

The match played out in strange symmetry. Lebrun won the opener with some comfort, Fan controlled the second, and the two exchanged dominant games through the third and fourth. In the fifth, Fan built a 7-4 lead before Lebrun closed out 11-9.

Reaching that quarterfinal required a comeback of its own. In the 2023 opening round, Lebrun trailed World No. 6 Truls Moregård 1-2 in sets before taking two tight games to advance. Elsewhere in the draw, Wang Chuqin rallied to edge South Korea's Jang Woojin 3-2 in the quarterfinals, Hugo Calderano topped Dimitrij Ovtcharov 3-1 in an earlier round, and Darko Jorgić eliminated Liang Jingkun. After dispatching Fan, Lebrun was drawn against Ma Long in the semifinal.

The city had already given Lebrun his international introduction at WTT Champions Macao 2022, when he announced himself with an upset over then-World No. 3 Liang Jingkun. He had been ranked as low as No. 1050 in January 2022; 15 months later he was world No. 19 and had beaten the planet's best player.

Now at the Galaxy Arena for the ITTF Men's World Cup for the first time, with the event running through April 5, Lebrun's March 31 win marks the start of yet another Macao chapter.