I think PongCommenter is closer to the truth than you are. Gauzy even when playing well has never really threatened better players. His win over Xu Xin was followed by the loss to Falck. His current play is partly a result of the arrival of the Lebruns as they have pushed up the overall level of France and given Gauzy a challenge to maintain a place on a team where he was usually the default leader. But other than this recent period where his level was pushed up by trying to stave off the Lebruns, I have never seen Gauzy as a perennial Contender who pushed but ultimately lost to better players. Germany with Boll and Dima stable dominated Europe for the past decade even with occasional incursions by Samsonov or the random Lebesson or Groth or Ionescu surge. Gauzy is just another one of the top players in Europe who just never had the right motivation IMHO to do what it took to get better because it might have risked what he already had. His late change to faster blades is a symptom of this.
Ok I can't let you say those kind of bullshit, Gauzy's motivation can't be questionable, he trains way harder than everyone in the France's squad, his physicality is above the Bros who always praise his hours of core strengthening, I mean can you do splits on rallies ? BH around the net shots on the FH side ? but this very demanding type of physical playing leads to injuries, we all know that, Alexis knows that too.
He's always been very sincere about his mental condition: he's suffered from burn-out some years ago, and yes it was partly about the Lebrun's uprising, but also because he wanted to capitalise on the good Tokyo OG he made and he literally burnt himself at this game playing too much. He just adapted himself to the new material cos' he was an allwood blade aficionado.
For fck sake, how many europeans in the top10 can claim they've beaten Xu Xin in one of the Grand Slam event with an all wood blade ? NONE
We all have our failures, Simon Gauzy is not the best euro player and he knows it, all he wants now is having fun and to serve Team France the best he can. Doing the double duties in Paris is the proof he adapted to the situation, the best double is the Lebrun Bros, but to keep Felix at the 1st place right after the double match he does the double with Alexis and that's not the best combination for France, and still... he fights his arse off, like he did with Alexis vs Japan for the bronze medal match. Manu only have 1 big win on the international stage, with no asian in there in single events, remember that. To keep Felix fresh in singles event even his bro Alexis adapted to the situation by playing the XD with Yuan Jianan.
And that's also the proof that Han Hua has terribly failed to push France to the heights it deserves, that's why Gilles Erb has succeeded to be the FFTT president, but remember: he's been elected on ashes in december 2020, when the Bros were still training in their parents basement, in the pandemic. Erb has been very lucky, and he knows it, and he's capitalized on this by firing Han Hua and naming Jean-Nicolas Barelier as the new DTN, and then by bringing up the Team Lebrun up to the Direction Technique Nationale with Nathanael Molin as the new captain of the men's team. He had to make Patrick Chila understand it was the right thing to do, we're talking about Chila here, an OG bronze medalist in doubles ! one of the french musketeers of the 90's era ! the guys who was coaching... Simon Gauzy when he defeated Xu Xin !
