Antoine Dupont to miss Six Nations and focus on Sevens at Paris Olympics

France captain Antoine Dupont will miss the 2024 Six Nations to focus on representing his country at next summer’s Olympics in Paris.

Dupont, who led Les Bleus to a disappointing quarter-final exit at this year’s World Cup, will join up with France’s sevens squad in January after an agreement was reached between the player, his club – Stade Toulousain – and the Fédération Française de Rugby.

The 27-year-old’s involvement will be confirmed in a press conference on Monday, according to AFP, with the scrum-half set to feature in SVNS events – the new name for World Rugby’s sevens circuit – in Vancouver, Canada on February 23-24 and Los Angeles on March 2-3 which will rule him out of participating in the 15-a-side championship.

Dupont’s last appearance in the 15-a-side game came last month, in France’s agonising one-point defeat to eventual world champions South Africa in the quarter-finals. The scrum-half, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s best players, is due to return to domestic action with Toulouse in the coming weeks, but how much involvement Dupont has with his club post-January remains up in the air.

Should Dupont earn selection for the 2024 Olympics – which is not certain, according to an FFR source – France’s talisman would have been missing from the international rugby scene for over 12 months, leaving head coach Fabien Galthié to find a new captain and scrum-half for the Six Nations and the summer tour to Argentina.

Charles Ollivon, Galthié’s original captain at the beginning of his tenure as head coach, would be a leading skipper candidate after deputising in Dupont’s stead during the World Cup, when the scrum-half was sidelined with a facial fracture.

At scrum-half, Galthié has a plethora of options at his disposal. Maxime Lucu was Dupont’s understudy during rugby’s blue riband event with Baptiste Couilloud the third scrum-half in France’s squad. Baptiste Serin and Teddy Iribaren have both won caps under Galthié, while Baptiste Jauneau of Clermont Auvergne starred during France’s under-20s title triumph last summer.

Last December, Dupont expressed his eagerness to represent France in next summer’s Parisian event, which first featured in the Olympics in 2016.

“It’s highly motivating,” Dupont told RTL. “It’s incredible when you see the enthusiasm it can create. There is a desire from my side to put things in place for me to participate. It will be a discussion between the different coaching staffs.”

Also on Wednesday, Rugby Australia confirmed that Michael Hooper would mimic Dupont’s path, with the Wallabies legend linking up with his country’s sevens side in January.

Hooper, who has 125 caps for Australia – 69 as captain – was omitted from Eddie Jones’s squad for the World Cup, which saw the Wallabies crash out in the pool stages for the first time.

The 32-year-old is hopeful of representing Australia in the inaugural Perth SVNS event in January and earning selection to the 2024 Olympics.