SPO Rouen wins first French team title after 3-2 final thriller
Rouen trailed twice, then closed out GV Hennebont 3-2 at the Kindarena for its first French team title, a home breakthrough with national weight.
SPO Rouen finally turned a long chase into a first French team title, edging GV Hennebont 3-2 at the Kindarena in Rouen on 29 May 2026 and doing it the hard way, after twice coming from behind. The one-match margin gave the victory its edge: Rouen did not cruise to the trophy, it survived a full championship final in front of its home crowd.
The final had been billed as a collision of ambition and pedigree, with Rouen chasing its first title at home and Hennebont aiming for a sixth French crown. That framing mattered because the match sat inside a season FFTT described as unusually homogeneous, with all four semifinalists featuring recent French world-championship medalists. In other words, Rouen’s breakthrough came in a league where nothing was handed over easily.
Thibault Poret, Rouen’s standout right-hander and world No. 12 in the FFTT profile dated 12 December 2025, carried the club’s top-end credibility into the final. Across the table was Simon Gauzy, the former French singles champion and Olympic medalist whose long international record made Hennebont one of the most dangerous domestic opponents in the sport. The final’s 3-2 scoreline reflected that level of resistance and gave Rouen a title that now reads as earned rather than inherited.
The emotional force of the night went beyond the players. FFTT commentary singled out SPO Rouen president Dominique Fache, along with the club’s staff, volunteers and supporters, as central figures in the celebration that followed. That detail fits the scale of the result: this was not just a trophy for a roster, but a landmark for an organization that had been chasing the breakthrough for years.
The timing also strengthened the impact. Metz had already taken the women’s French title the previous week, leaving French table tennis with back-to-back championship moments to close the season. Rouen’s win added another layer to that run, and in a domestic structure as deep as France’s, a first title won in a 3-2 final carries real weight. It gives SPO Rouen a place in the hierarchy it had not yet claimed and leaves the league with a new champion that reached the top by enduring a classic, not avoiding one.
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