The other athletes “are surprised that we’re starting so early,” confides rugby player Antoine Dupont.

Two days before his first rugby 7s match for the Paris Olympic Games, French rugby star Antoine Dupont shares his impressions exclusively on France 2’s 8pm news. “We knew that the format would be special, that we would arrive in the village [olympique, Ndlr] and that we would start three days later (…) it’s true that when we talk to other disciplines, they are surprised that we start so early”underlines the rugby player who will play his last match of the Olympic Games on Saturday.

Antoine Dupont is aware of the challenge of opening the competition ball for French athletes, and intends to give “a good dynamic for all the French teams that will follow”.

He also points out that playing with seven players when you are used to covering the same ground as a team of 15, is “very hard physically”. An intense effort, with “14-minute matches, twice a day and a competition that lasts three days”. A format that Antoine Dupont had already practiced in his “18,19 years old”. And to add on his participation in the Olympic Games: “We have legendary memories of the Games (…) to think that my discipline, rugby, is now part of it is really something that motivated me”.