Considered the best French player in history and one of the best in the world, Antoine Dupont has origins that he hid for a long time.
Antoine Dupont is the best in the world of Rugby in France. The scrum half, captain of the French XV, was also voted best player in the world in 2021. We might even be surprised to only see him once in this list because he has been so dominant for several seasons.
In the summer of 2024, he added a new string to his bow by joining the rugby sevens team to try to seek Olympic gold, a few months after the disillusionment of the World Cup in France. A mission well carried out, since the Stade Toulousain player won the Olympic title, further expanding his record. Enough to draw even more attention to him, his personality, his private life, his origins…
Because the player's journey is ultimately quite unknown, Antoine Dupont having until now remained very secretive about his life off the field. In 2023, a France Télévisions documentary, “Premières Danses – Antoine Dupont, des amis et un ballon”, lifts the veil a little on the sidelines of the Rugby World Cup. More recently, Antoine Dupont revealed some secrets, notably about his father, in “Lesencontres du Papotin” on the same channel. This allowed the general public to better know the hero of the oval ball.
Born in Lannemezan, in the Hautes Pyrénées, Antoine Dupont spent his entire childhood in Castelnau-Magnoac, in a family of farmers, as he also explained in a video for the media Brut a few months ago. But he did not want to reveal these origins for many years at the highest level, recognizing that he had long felt a form of shame for this modest rural environment.
“When I was little, we were almost ashamed to say that we were farmers. The connotation was always negative, I remember that at school, to write my parents' profession, I wrote hotelier-restaurateur and I did not write farmer. And today we can be proud and value that more.”he explained in particular.
However, it is perhaps thanks to this environment that Antoine Dupont became a rugby player before creating his legend on the pitch. “Rugby had a big connotation at the time since most of the clubs were in the South West and many assimilated it to a country sport, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.“
For the record, Clément, the brother of Antoine Dupont, works today as a breeder of black pigs to perpetuate the family tradition while Antoine Dupont affirms: he is not the most courageous in the middle beasts. “I'm not the bravest, honestly, I'm not going to lie to you. If I don't have a stick in my hands when I enter the field, I'm not at peace.” This is at least one thing capable of making him doubt.
