2023-12-21 19:46:39
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 2 hours ago, Updated now
Antoine Dupont against Harlequins in the Champions Cup. ANDREW COULDRIDGE / REUTERS
The Blues scrum half could be absent in Toulouse beyond the Games, at the start of the 2024-2025 season.
HAS “exceptional player», «exceptional conditions“: everything is being done so that Antoine Dupont can best prepare for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with the French rugby sevens team, said Didier Lacroix, the president of his club, Stade Toulousain, on Thursday. The head of French rugby will not participate in the next Six Nations Tournament with the Blues, in February-March, to be able to familiarize himself with the technical and physical specificities of 7, the discipline represented at the Olympics.
«We have had discussions about playing time so he can train. This playing time will rather take place over periods of the France team (15th team). He (Dupont) had a choice to make on this», Said Lacroix at a press conference. “We create exceptional conditions for an exceptional player», added the manager, whose club could especially be affected beyond the Games (July 26-August 11), at the start of the 2024-2025 season.
“Ask yourself the question of your recovery”
«If it is rinsed and it feels like it hasn’t been cut for a while, we will have to ask ourselves the question of its recovery», Lacroix raised. “The substitution of Antoine Dupont during this period is to be expected. How ? Are we adapting regulations? This is a very special case“, he asked.
The Toulouse president also estimated that Dupont and his teammate Romain Ntamack had “reached levels of media coverage and popular enthusiasm never before reached». «I don’t have the impression for the moment that we have gone astray in terms of attitude, of “values”“, he stressed. “I feel a lot of satisfaction that rugby and certain individuals have gained so much media and popular intensity. But I remain vigilant».
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