Rouen edge Hennebont 3-2 to win first French Pro A men’s title
Rouen stunned French table tennis’s established order, beating Hennebont 3-2 in a packed Kindarena to claim the club’s first Pro A men’s crown.
Rouen did not just win a final, it broke open the French club hierarchy. In front of a packed Kindarena on May 29 at 20:45, SPO Rouen edged regular-season winner GV Hennebont 3-2 to capture the first French Pro A men’s title in club history, turning a tense night into a landmark moment for the club and its supporters.
The match had all the ingredients of a title decider. The Fédération Française de Tennis de Table billed it as one of the season’s showcase events, with Rouen chasing a first home title and Hennebont aiming for a sixth French championship. The wider backdrop made it feel even bigger: the women’s Pro A title had already gone to Metz a week earlier, and the men’s race was framed as unusually open after defending champions Alliance Nîmes-Montpellier missed the final.
Hennebont struck first through Vladimir Sidorenko, who beat Lilian Bardet in straight games to put the regular-season winners in front. Rouen answered through a heavyweight French battle, with Thibault Poret defeating Simon Gauzy 3-1 to level the tie at 1-1 and keep the home crowd alive.
The pendulum swung again when Qihao Zhou outlasted Alvaro Robles 3-2, a brutal five-game win that put Hennebont back on the brink of glory and left Rouen needing both of its marquee players to deliver under maximum pressure. That set up the turning point. Poret returned to face Sidorenko and crushed the momentum of the visitors with a 3-0 win, pulling Rouen level and sending the final rubber into a packed, loud arena that knew exactly what was at stake.
Bardet then produced the result that will define Rouen’s season. Faced with Gauzy in the fifth and final match, Bardet made the stronger start, seized the early momentum and held his nerve in the deciding game as the Kindarena roared behind him. The 3-2 win was as narrow as it was historic, with each rubber carrying the weight of a title that Rouen had never previously held.
For Rouen, this was more than an upset over a proven power. It was a season-ending breakthrough that changes how the club will be viewed across Europe, not as an outsider hoping to sneak into the conversation, but as a French champion that can close the biggest night with authority.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
