the essential
In the evening in Marseille, Antoine Dupont will embark on the penultimate stage of his long season. And everything was done so that he could be at his best level.
He preferred to brush away the bad memories that people tried to put in his head. “3Thank you for reminding me,” said Antoine Dupont, about his misadventures in Marseille [carton rouge en 2022 puis blessure lors du Mondial].
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The scrum half did not give in to humor, but responded with his usual sobriety: “Obviously when I see again this passage through which I came out a few weeks ago, these are not great events which come back in head. But I ignore all that. There shouldn’t be any superstition or anything else and I just have to stay focused on what’s up to me. And then, the contexts are different.”
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The jerseys and the stakes too. This Friday, June 29 in the evening, the Bigourdan will have a fourth French champion title to win with Stade Toulousain. As well as the possibility of achieving a second Top 14-Champions Cup double after that of 2021.
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“Before these meetings, a lot of feelings mix: excitement, enthusiasm, and a little apprehension too,” recognizes Dupont. Above all, it will be one of the many deadlines that number 9 had ticked off in his very long season. The failed World Cup, the successful Champions Cup, the Top 14 final at the Vélodrome will be the penultimate stage before the Olympic Games with the French Sevens team, in July.
A “tailor-made” program
“I knew it would be a busy year for me, with high goals,” admits the former Castres player. Where all parties involved worked to preserve the player as best they could, physically and mentally. Weariness and exhaustion can quickly rear their ugly heads in this kind of marathon. “There is one thing he forgot to tell you, is that he has never had so many holidays,” contextualizes, with humor, the manager of the Stade Ugo Mola.
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And this “tailor-made program for Antoine” took time to take shape, finding its origin at the end of the Grand Slam of the French XV in 2022, where Dupont had concretely formulated this wish to compete in the Olympics.
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“It was a long process,” confided Mola. “We started discussions with Bernard Laporte, Serge Simon, Didier Lacroix, as well as the LNR, who helped us a lot. We managed to ensure that Antoine had the time he needed to recover and prepare as best he could. Then we worked closely with Jérôme Daret and Christophe Reigt, the bosses of the French VII, with the aim of putting things in order.”
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But putting things in order is not necessarily “a guarantee of success and title” concedes the manager. But in Marseille, for once, Antoine Dupont would like to touch wood.
