Reporting. The loss of his best friend, the test of his Matéo son … Ibanez engages on his heaviest secrets

Mauléon, nestled in the fold of the Basque mountains, seems this April morning to sink into a gray torpor, wrapped entirely by monotonous rain and low sky. Heavy vapors, escaped from the forests, go up along the slopes, clinging to the slate roofs; From all sides, greenery, exaggerated by water, bursts with deaf violence. In the city center, silhouettes pass, heads returned, stealthy looks, heavy jackets. Here, everything is in its place: water, stone, old force of the place. No theater, no cinema. Just the rain, the mountain and eternity in the background. If Raphaël Ibanez chose the chief town of the Soule, one of the seven provinces of the Basque Country, to grant us this interview, it is because he sometimes lodges not far from there, between the four walls of an old barn which he re-recovered for his “tribe”, twenty years ago.

He, the Landais by birth, therefore knows the place perfectly and, passing near the castle of Mauléon, explains that in the 17th century, the parish priest of Moncayolle was thrown into oblivion by the troops of Mazarin for having led, at the head of several dozen Basque peasants, an insurrection in the face of royal power. Because it is like that, “rafa”. Pique of history, curious about everything and rather proud of this family tree which makes him the direct descendant of worthy opponents of two dictatorships, Francoist for his grandfather, Mussolinian for his grandmother. Concludes the anecdote, the manager of the XV of France now pushes the door of Euskalduna, a good local table. He pulls a chair, takes off his cap and, before being trained by the rhythm of the questions, sighs heavily. He knows that the exercise will be painful. He knows that he is not only there to speak rugby. In the preamble, he says this: “This is the first time, and probably the last, that I will talk about all of this publicly.”

Horror in Cantabrie

From Ibanez, we know the public side, the face of the former captain of the XV of France or that of the current manager of the Blues. But what do we really know about the one who walked first alongside Fabien Galkié, before conceding, over the second mandate of “Galette”, a certain media decline? Little things, in the end. And now that his post holds him on the margins of the fight, in the cozy corridors of the locker room and the commissions, Ibanez looks at others to play, observes this group France which he cherishes so much but, sometimes, also reads in him a pain that no melee has never caused. For “Rafa”, the first of the shocks came without balloon, without referee and without audiences. He entered his life as the mist invades the Soule valleys. The date? He strikes her like marble. “April 11, 2022. It was the day I was brought back to the reality of life; the day when I really became aware of the fragility of our existence.”

That morning, Raphaël Ibanez and his childhood friend, the former second line of the US Dax Fabrice Labarrière, therefore descended the Deva river in kayak. Cantabrie, placed north of Bilbao, is known for the beauty of its hinterland, its wilderness and its nervous water, hung on the mountain side. Very quickly after having embarked, Fabrice nevertheless falls from his kayak and finds himself swept away by the current. He is then blocked by a heap of branches, under a rock. Alerted by the crash, the manager of the XV of France jumps from his own boat to help his friend. For long minutes, Ibanez struggles, dives, goes up, pulls on the heavy strains. In vain. “I saw my best friend drown before my eyes, he said now. I also almost stayed there. “ The body of Fabrice Labarrière will finally be found five hours later by the help of the Guardia Civil, which were then forced to use a crane to release the branches that took the colossus. Behind that, Ibanez logically sunk, losing sleep, rehashing these images endlessly.

He continues: “I nevertheless received a lot of support. Tony Estanguet (former Olympic Kayak champion, editor’s note) Even called me to tell me that being trapped by the clusters of branches is the most dreaded accident of kayakers “. The manager of the XV of France suspends his sentence, sighs, resumes: “So far, I had had a rather spared life and a happy childhood; more Huckleberry than Tom Sawyer. I have received a lot of affection from my parents and at home, we have always preferred to talk about joy of living rather of the spectrum of death. With us, it always remains a difficult subject, moreover: day after day, my mom (Janine, N.D.L.R.) Continue to tell me that you should not worry about it, that everything is fine … The reality of our destiny is obviously quite different and caught up in 2022. It was brutal “.

Raphaël Ibanez has now learned to live with this disappearance. To overcome the shock, he called on EMDR (Psychotherapy by eye movement which targets traumatic memories, editor’s note)a hypnotic method which generally helps the great trauma of war. “I was followed, yes. Thanks to this technique, I saw images of childhood, the moments of complicity with my boyfriend Fabrice … I laughed, I cried but this method saved me: before that, the nightmares were frequent. I thought of his family, to his children and then, the sadness overwhelmed me by waves. […] The images, I will obviously never forget them. But from this drama, I can now talk about it; That’s already it. “

Matéo, his other fight

Eight months after losing his best friend, “Rafa” nevertheless saw his life cracking a second time. Faced with us, in this dining room still waiting for its first customers, it is now slamming another date in the air: “December 18, 2022”. A week before Christmas, the former captain of the Blues (52 years old, 98 selections) therefore learned that his younger son Matéo, then 22 years old, suffered from acute leukemia. “A total shock, continues Raphaël. He spent the first two weeks in resuscitation … We almost lost him, this big fellow of 1m94 … “ He marks a break, sighs, resumes: “No parent is prepared for this kind of pain and quickly, we entered the group of caregivers, accompanying people”. So is it not an insult to common sense, to the order of things, that youth is visited by twilight? Children must bury their fathers, not the other way around. They must run, fall in love, be wrong, start again. They should not know the white corridors of hospitals, tubes and syringes. Shortly after learning about the disease hitting his clan, Raphaël therefore asked “Why” to the oncologist who then followed his son. The Toubib looked at him, raised the shoulders and, to answer, simply pretended to launch a room in the air.

Three years later, the question of “rafa” has still not found any explanation but after having fought with dignity, Matéo is better. “In France, now said his father, We tend to cry over our fate but we have, in our country, an exceptional health service and people who save lives. ” In the spring of 2025, his son was in remission and even obtained, recently, the green light from the oncologist to take over rugby in Blagnac, in Federal 1. Of course, the one who joins the club of his youngest Julian today is still under chemotherapy, well aware that the risk of recurrence is not negligible. “At any rate, concludes the manager of the Blues, Matéo is by far the strongest of us “. After having fought for months in a hospital room, he thus, in parallel with his fight, finished major of promo at INSA, one of the most prestigious engineering schools in Toulouse. So sometimes, when he observes his son, “Rafa” smiles. And says that nothing is never lost, for those who love life enough …