Christophe Legoût

Christophe Legoût (born 6 August 1973 in Montbéliard, Doubs) is a French table tennis player. He is also left-handed, and uses the classic grip and Butterfly Legout blade.

Table tennis career Since he became a member of the national team in 1991, Legout is considered one of France's most prominent and popular table tennis players in its sporting history. He is a multiple-time French champion in both the singles and doubles tournaments, and has won a total of ten medals (three golds and seven silver) in the same discipline at the ITTF World Tour series. Legout is previously a member of the table tennis team at the Levallois Sporting Club in Paris, before he moved to Provence to train for Istres Ouest Provence, under his personal coaches Jean Claude and Stéphane Lebrun.

At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Legout teamed up with two-time world bronze medalist Damien Éloi in the men's doubles tournament, where the French pair placed first in the preliminary pool round against Canada's Johnny Huang and Kurt Liu, and Argentina's Liu Song and Pablo Tabachnik, receiving four winning matches and a total score of 96 points. Legout and Eloi defeated Sweden's Jörgen Persson and Jan-Ove Waldner in the first round of the knock-out stage, before losing out their next match to the formidable Chinese duo Wang Liqin and Yan Sen, with a unanimous set score of 0–3. Having been chosen as one of the top 16 seeded players, Legout received a bye in the preliminary pool stage of the men's singles, before beating South Korea's Ryu Seung-min in his first match. He progressed to the second round, but lost to Belarus' Vladimir Samsonov, with a final set score of 0–3.

Eight years after competing in his last Olympics, Legout qualified for his third French team, as a 35-year-old, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by receiving a place as one of the top 8 seeded players from the European Qualification Tournament in Nantes. He received a bye for the first round match of his only event, the men's singles, before losing out to Vietnam's Doan Kien Quoc, with a set score of 2–4.