A month after France’s shock exit at the Rugby World Cup, French captain Dupont confirms he will miss the Six Nations in order to try and win Olympic gold. Michael Hooper, the former Australian captain, is also hoping to make the Paris Olympics team. Find out which other players have made the switch.
Antoine Dupont and Michael Hooper may be able to redeem themselves by playing rugby sevens.
In a presentation today (20 November), Jean-Marc Lhermet outlined his intentions for the French skipper to begin training with the French sevens team in January in order to ‘potentially play in the Perth tournament’ from 26-28 January 2024 as part of the World Rugby SVNS series.
As a result, Dupont will miss Les Bleu’s Six Nations campaign in February-March 2024.
Stade Toulousain captain, who confirmed he would be part of the France rugby sevens team for Paris 2024, is hoping to lead his nation to its first Rugby World Cup victory in 2023.
After losing 29-28 to eventual winners South Africa in the quarter-finals, the hosts were agonizingly eliminated.
But should the scrum-half win Olympic gold with France in the same Paris stadium that they lost last month, it will be a seismic moment as if Neymar helped Brazil’s football team win Olympic gold at Rio 2016, having been part of the team that lost 7-1 to Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup semi-final.