Matthieu Lartot chose his Instagram account to announce news that was in danger of leaking. Mr. Rugby from France TV puts his career on hold to fight cancer in his right knee. It is a relapse of his tumor in the joint, a disease which he discovered by chance at the age of 16, after an accident during a rugby match.
“Since nowadays everything is known, as much as it is me who announces it to you, declares the presenter of the Sunday program Stage 2. For three weeks, I knew that this moment would arrive. Today I am forced to leave the antenna to get back in the ring and fight cancer a second time! 26 years later, history unfortunately stutters. There was a 1-5% chance of it happening and it did. It will shake very hard but I am ready and very well surrounded. I will never be very far from the fields and teams of France TV Sports. And like the Blues, my only objective in 2023 is victory. »
In 2020, Matthieu Lartot explained to Paris Match that he was “injured in a match” when he was young. “We thought it was a sprained knee and from there a mass appeared inside my knee. We could have missed it and for it to develop in silence and for it to be more serious”.
His knee and joint were then removed to fit him with a prosthesis. During a new operation, his leg was reduced by 2.5 cm due to a nosocomial infection. The journalist, now 43, then spent many months in hospital and then in rehabilitation.
While rugby audiences have never been so good for more than 15 years, Matthieu Lartot had gone from “narrator of loss” to “storyteller of happiness”, as he described himself recently to our newspaper. He was looking forward to September to follow the exploits of the XV of France, who are among the favorites for the world title, even if TF1 are the rights holder and only a few matches have been sub-licensed to France TV .
