the essential
Before the trial of the rugby player who tackled him, judged this Tuesday, December 17 in Tarbes for “violence leading to permanent disability”, Mathias Dantin gives unfiltered testimony.
Two years after your accident, what state of mind are you in?
Let’s say that with my family, the entourage, we managed to bounce back quite quickly… But daily life remains very, very hard. At the very beginning, when I looked back at photos of myself, before the accident, when I looked at this guy, I said to myself: “he’s dead, you need to stop thinking about it, he’s gone, you need to that you are reborn in a new body. On a daily basis, I always need someone with me, I am not at all independent. The projects that I can carry out help me rebuild myself, I have always been a very active person. So if I sat around doing nothing, in Christmas tree mode, I was going to lose my temper. It’s been two years now, it’s a sad anniversary because I almost passed away, but I’m still here.
Medically, can you explain what you are suffering from?
I am a C4-C5 quadriplegic, everything below the lesion is damaged. I can move my arms, but I have no fingers, no left wrist and barely my right. Concerning the “pecs”, the triceps, the abs, the lower back and the legs… all that, I no longer have. To go from the chair to the bed, to the shower chair, I can’t do it alone. Every four hours I have to do catheterization and empty the bladder. I can’t do that alone, either. Afterwards, there is everything that is not “visible”: the intestines, the diaphragm, it is damaged. I have to take around twenty medications a day, the slightest daily gesture is an intense physical effort, I get tired very quickly. And what’s really hard is putting my family through this situation.
What do you expect from this trial?
The question seems simple, but the answer is difficult… Do I tell myself that the person who did this to me should be judged very harshly? Not necessarily. What I want above all is for my dignity to be restored as much as possible, for this injustice to be pointed out. And that I be respected, which has not been the case since day one, particularly in terms of compensation. I am seriously injured in rugby, and there must be moral and financial recognition. Secondly, I hope this will help me turn the page on the person responsible for this act. I never had any contact with him, no one in the family ever tried to talk to me… We think what we want, I don’t necessarily have an opinion on the subject. But the facts are there. Could I ever forgive? Honestly, I don’t know.
Do you have any memories of the gesture you suffered, namely a “cathedral tackle” at the end of this school match?
This expression makes me smile every time because it is so undefinable that we try to find a term that comes close to it. A cathedral tackle, for me, is taking someone from the front, turning them around, and making them fall on their back or head. There, it was something completely different. I have often thought about it. And I still don’t have the words. It looked more like a street fight, I was taken from behind, he lifted me, carried me three meters and swung me down on my head, which broke my neck… It’s a a gesture of incredible violence, which has no place on a rugby field, and even nowhere else. No one has the right to do that.
What is quite striking is that despite the accident, your love of rugby has not changed one iota, how do you explain it?
What happened to me was not a game event. Unfortunate injuries, in tackles, in scrums, there were some… For me, that’s not it. So rugby, I don’t blame him. I blame fate and the person who did this to me more. What happened to me is a fact of society, with ever more violence everywhere on a daily basis. In rugby, there are a lot of values to promote and preserve. It’s a very beautiful sport, and if one day I have a son who asks me to play rugby, I will say yes to him without any hesitation.
Really ?
I will have no reservations. The only fear will be that he meets someone like me, I met one…
