Newsletter

Christophe Dominici, the untimely death of a gaming giant

Suddenly the news arrives, and obviously something is wrong. Christophe Dominici is dead. At 48 years old. His former club, Stade Français, announced it on Tuesday, November 24 in the middle of the afternoon. His body was found in the park of Saint-Cloud, near Paris. According to a witness, he jumped from the roof of a building in the park, AFP reports. An investigation was opened by the Nanterre prosecutor’s office.

The circumstances of the death are unclear, and the shock is immense. Because Christophe Dominici was life, intense. Often, everything went quickly with the international winger, and not just his cavalcades along the touchline: his words too, which jostled, his outbursts often, and his force of conviction which won out almost everything. You had to hang on to follow him. And it was like that from the start.

An exceptional career

He was born in Toulon and therefore in rugby country, even if his first races, he did them on football fields. The oval seized him at the age of 17, and from then on the fellow flew like an arrow to meet his destiny. In Toulon first, from 1993, then at the Stade Français from 1997, and for a very long lease of more than ten years. There, in the team bought and restructured by Max Guazzini, and with Bernard Laporte in charge, he won his first Brennus shield in 1998. Four others will follow (2000, 2003, 2004 and 2007).

“Domi” terror of the championship, but also on international grounds. With the XV of France, the twirling winger won four Tournaments of the VI Nations including two Grand Slams (1998 and 2004). He goes on three World Cups, including the first in 1999 which offers him his greatest moment of rugby happiness, this semi-final won against the All Blacks (43-31).

When he put away the crampons in 2007, we can applaud the record and the services rendered (67 selections). Christophe Dominici, however, will experience real frustration by becoming assistant coach at the Stade Français for a year alongside the Australian Ewen McKenzie. The current does not really pass, and the experiment is cut short.

A successful retraining, but still a frustration

Getting away from rugby? Christophe Dominici does not really want it, always says the bottom of his thoughts as a radio (RTL) or television consultant (France 2 or the channel The team a time), but also pursues its business elsewhere. Another piece of luggage than the sports bag that he had taken care to fill already during his career, by buying a bar first in the 1990s, then a ready-to-wear store, and then by investing in wine on the advice of his father, Jeannot.

Christophe Dominici thus founded the Monte Bacco group, a wine producer but diversified in the bottling of mineral water. ” Everything that is liquid interests me, and since humans are liquid, it interests me », He confided to The team at the beginning of the year, with his sometimes rather enigmatic sense of the formula. The business in any case seemed rather in good shape, with outlets in Asian markets, and a turnover of 12 million euros in 2019.

But probably the former player was really missing rugby. From the spring, Christophe Dominici invested heavily in the purchase of a monument of French rugby, the club of Béziers.

Project leader financed by a Franco-Emirati investor, Christophe Dominici was to become the club’s sports director. But the transaction turned into a soap opera, before finally collapsing in July 2020. The two parties, the mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard in particular and the leaders of the group interested in the takeover, had very harsh words against Christophe Dominici . Who did not live the episode well, on which he had also remained silent after the failure of the project.

.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending