French Rugby superstar Antoine Dupont surprised many when decided to play for France at the upcoming Olympic Games and not the sport’s biggest European event, Six Nations. Considered by some to be one of the sports’ best players, his presence on the Olympic team has elevated France’s hopes of winning gold in the sport.
Just this week analyst and reporter Philip Bendon from the site FloRugby named him #1 in the world.
“Dynamic, physical and creative, Dupont is the complete package and is head and shoulders above the rest as the best player in the world. Sucking up the gut punch of being dumped out of the 2023 Rugby World Cup in brutal fashion, the French maestro has led his club side Toulouse to the Investec Champions Cup and Top 14 titles in 2024 as well as taken the rugby 7s world by storm leading France to two titles ahead of the Olympics. Sitting comfortably in the pantheon of all-time greats at just 27-years-old, Dupont is this generation’s Jonah Lomu.”
He is also a trailblazer in queer rights. Just weeks ago he appeared on the cover of the French queer website Têtu.com, where he spoke as an LGBTQ+ ally. (Only one professional rugby star in France, Jeremy Clamy-Edroux, is out publicly as gay, writes PinkNews.) And promises action if he encounters homophobia on the field.
“From now on, if a player makes homophobic remarks on the pitch, I would stop the match because things have to change,” he told Têtu.com.
“The goal is for all players to feel good about their sexuality and to be accepted by others. Even if rugby can be seen as macho, we are very open-minded, and today I think we are all capable of accepting others’ sexual orientations.”
While Rugby isn’t considered as homophobic a sport as Soccer, a 2020 British study funded by a female Rugby team found that “almost half of male rugby players admitted to recently using homophobic slurs while over two-thirds had heard team-mates use similar language,” SkySports wrote. “The study analysed data collected from randomly selected rugby clubs in the south of England in January and February of 2020.
