One of the French’s favorite soap operas resumed for a highly anticipated new season, Wednesday November 15. It is not a question of the return of More beautiful life, but new adventures of the most famous rugby player in France. After Antoine Dupont collects titles with Stade Toulouse and the French team and the “hearing card” of “Antoine Dupont’s maxillo-zygomatic fracture” during the World Cup, now it’s time to Antoine Dupont takes up rugby sevens to aim for the Olympic title.
The release of the new episode seemed more and more likely over the last few months, the captain of the French XV having never hidden his desire to try the Sevens game this year to try to be selected for the Olympic Games 2024. Last week, the French Rugby Federation (FFR) formalized the upcoming integration of the Blues playing master into the “septists” with Agence France-Presse.
Antoine Dupont will begin preparation with his new team ” early January “, announced Monday, November 20, Jean-Marc Lhermet, vice-president of the FFR, during a press conference. Objective: that it be “ready as quickly as possible to contribute the maximum of what he can, first in preparation, and then if he is chosen from the team, to participate in the Olympic Games. »
It remains to be seen what this new campaign for Dupont will look like. Will he manage to play the “Super Toto” role and help the Blues of the Sevens team obtain their first Olympic medal? Or will he, on the contrary, have difficulty adapting to this new environment? “He’s an alien, even if we put him in a Formula 1 car he would finish first”said, categorically, Terry Bouhraoua, a former captain of the Blues at VII (323 caps) visibly not worried by the turn taken by Dupont.
Voted best player in the world (at XV) in 2021, the scrum half from Stade Toulouse will have to review his schedule. Exit, for example, the 2024 Six Nations Tournament with the French XV, in favor of two stages of the world rugby sevens circuit, in Vancouver from February 23 to 25, and in Los Angeles on March 2 and 3. A minimum, according to Damien Cler. “You have to play at least four or five tournaments to be really good in the discipline”estimates the one who was there with the Blues in 2016, at the Rio Games.
Towards weight loss
Between his passage from the XV to the VII, Damien Cler claims to have “lost six kilos in one month”. Indeed, the preparation of a sevens rugby player has nothing to do with that of a “fifteen player”. “The VII is the very high level. In training, we just run. We do endurance at very high speed. And if you haven’t run enough at the end of a workout, you do the 100 meters.”, relates the ex-La Rochelle player. According to Jérémy Aicardi, coach of the Monaco sevens rugby team, Dupont should also “naturally lose at least two or three kilos” in the operation. A physical change that he will have to reconcile with his trips to the club.
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