Non, rien de rien.
The turf, he is aware of. The corridors and the dressing rooms, he is aware of. The best way the noise rolls across the stands, the winding route the coach takes into the center of the stadium, this he is aware of. However the open areas, the daunting feeling of freedom, of flying into the enamel of a gale, this half is new. It’s a journey Antoine Dupont has barely begun, and but right here, it ends.
We noticed him right here 9 months in the past, nursing a black eye and a thousand regrets, a ache in his physique that may subside and a ache in his soul that may not. He left Paris and took the primary airplane to Bali: a vacation to recharge the batteries and, extra necessary, a spot the place no person was exhibiting the World Cup ultimate. He didn’t need to see someone else lifting the trophy he craved. So he mooched, and browned, and returned with a plan.
Avec mes souvenirs, j’ai allumé le feu.
However even for the best rugby participant alive, redemption comes with its personal quantum of hazard. Lacking the Six Nations, abandoning the group he calls house and the colleagues he adores and the sport he has mastered, for a step right into a windswept unknown. The glory – a gold medal in a house Olympics – is the best an athlete can know. However the danger is that you just get your coronary heart damaged another time.
Balayé pour toujours, je repars à zéro.
The imaginative and prescient is the simple half. Studying a brand new self-discipline in six months and making use of it to a group that didn’t qualify for Tokyo: that is rugby on its hardest setting. There are new ways and methods to grasp. The rucks are totally different. The kick-offs are totally different. The bodily calls for – the crucial to dash and preserve sprinting, time and again – are totally different. No pauses for breath, no hiding locations.
However this half at all times suited Dupont high quality, a participant who even on this collective endeavour has at all times been possessed by a fiercely protagonist spirit, a have to be decisive, “a participant who comes to reveal himself”, as his coach, Jérôme Daret, places it.
The best athletes quickly be taught that their expertise is an oath as a lot as a present. That they’ve an obligation to it, to themselves and to others, to maintain taking himself to new locations.
Non, rien de rien.
And so, on a reassuringly damp Paris night, right here he’s, able to undergo once more. South Africa, his World Cup nemeses, have been vanquished within the semi-final. Fiji, in the meantime, are the sword within the stone, 17 wins from 17 video games on the Olympics, a group who play rugby prefer it’s basketball, a sport of magical offloads and whirling combos unleashed at blur pace.
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The rating is 7-7 when Dupont arrives at first of the second half. After which it occurs.
Fiji kick off. Dupont collects the ball. Already the cogs are whirring, making sense of the black and white shapes dancing in his eyeline. On this place, most gamers merely hand the ball off, get settled, get into the sport. However these gamers don’t win an Olympic gold on six months of apply. And so Dupont goes. He simply goes. Possessed by pace, blessed by stillness, threading an ideal straight path up the left touchline. Aaron Grandidier Nkanang scores the attempt. However it’s Dupont who has lit the flame.
Daylight has damaged over Saint‑Denis and for seven minutes Dupont is its Solar King. An ideal Fiji facet is solely laid waste, flattened, outshone. He takes a fast faucet penalty, squirms previous two tacklers and forces himself over the road. Within the dying seconds, with grown males already weeping within the stands, he provides the ultimate flourish: a barrelling mini-maul, a second attempt, a roar of purgation.
Dupont didn’t want redeeming. He already had the love of a nation, the admiration of a whole sport, the Prime 14 titles and the endorsement offers. However what he created right here will final lengthy after the pink and purple livery has been taken down. A brand new period for a brand new sport, a house hero for a house Olympics, a second, a miracle.
Was it value it, definitely worth the sorrows and the heartaches? As he stood on the rostrum, La Marseillaise in his ears, a gold medal round his neck, Dupont regarded for all of the world like a person who regretted nothing.
