Paris has waited a century for the Olympic Games to return; it may take that long for rugby to witness another player like Antoine Dupont too.
France’s chief orchestrator has it all: vision, pin-point ambidextrous kicking, speed of execution, evasive runs and a destructive physique, all of which have helped him dictate matches at will for club and country.
He captained Les Bleus to their first Six Nations title in more than a decade in 2022, the year after being named the world’s best men’s player, and habitually leads his long-term club side Toulouse to national and continental success.
So at the Stade de France on day one of the Games, if all goes to plan in the qualifying rounds and barring any misfortune, the mercurial scrum-half will try to add Olympic gold to what’s already a well-stocked trophy cabinet. Men’s sevens has even been moved forward in the schedules in a bid to give the hosts a golden lift-off. No pressure then.
It’s an ambitious short-term switch that, if successful, will definitively set him apart from his contemporary peers.
Dupont, who was the face of a tournament in which the hosts were widely tipped to finally win their maiden title, had been rushed back from a cheekbone fracture sustained in the group stage. Nine months on, he is back at the Stade de France for redemption.
“What I like is putting myself in danger, trying a new experience with an immense objective,” he told Bros Stories a few weeks later. “The fact that it’s in Paris makes it even better, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Even by his own lofty standards, the adaptation to sevens has been startlingly seamless. After a handful of training sessions, he helped the team take bronze in the Vancouver leg of the World SVNS Series in February, before winning the Los Angeles leg a week later. It was Les Bleus’ first tournament win since the 2005 Paris event.
