Emblematic figure of the sports department of France Télévisions, Matthieu Lartot specializes in the comments of rugby matches broadcast on the public service. As such, the sports journalist will officiate as a commentator during the matches of the 2023 Rugby World Cup, which will be broadcast live on the various antennas of the France Télévisions group. An appointment that he almost missed because of his state of health. As a reminder, the presenter of the show Stage 2 was forced to retire from the air following a recurrence of his knee cancer. To heal effectively, the host was forced to have his right leg amputated. Since then, Matthieu Lartot has been following an adapted rehabilitation program in order to learn to walk with his new leg prosthesis. Interviewed by the magazine Tele-Leisure Friday August 25, 2023, the sports journalist revealed to have some “drooled” in the years leading up to his amputation, precisely because of his right leg.
Matthieu Lartot: “Today I have a bending knee, which hasn’t happened to me for 25 years”
“I was already disabled somewhere. I had a stiff leg almost: I only had 10 or 15 degrees of flexion, so it was little. It was an invisible disability because people who see me at the TV see a trunk man and they didn’t realize it”, explained the sports commentator to Tele-Leisure. This famous leg, now amputatedcaused him a number of problems in the exercise of his profession as a sports journalist, in particular when he had to provide commentary on a rugby match in the stands of a stadium. “I already had this handicap to climb the stairs, especially in certain stadiums, to arrive in a commentator position: there are stadiums where I really had a lot of it”underlined the commentator of France 2, who is nevertheless delighted with his new physical condition. “Today, I have a bent knee, which hasn’t happened to me for 25 years. I started cycling for example, I hadn’t done it for 30 years”, explained Matthieu Lartot.