The world of the oval ball shaken by terrible news. Matthieu Lartot, famous journalist and rugby commentator on France 2, has announced that he is facing cancer for the second time. A test that he wanted to make public, Tuesday, April 18, in the media and on social networks.
“Since nowadays everything is known… as much as it is me who announces it to you”, he began on his publication posted on Instagram, before continuing. “For 3 weeks I knew that this moment would arrive. Today I am forced to leave the antenna to get back into the ring and fight cancer a second time! 26 years later, history unfortunately stutters”.
For the famous host of Stage 2, “there was a 1 to 5% chance that it would happen and it happened”. Far from being defeatist, the forty-year-old hopes to get up stronger from this ordeal. “It’s going to shake up very hard but I’m ready and very well surrounded. I’ll never be very far from the fields and the France TV Sport teams. And like the blues, my only goal in 2023 is victory”.
Asked in the newspaper Le Parisien, Matthieu Lartot gave his confidences on this cancer that he had already faced during his adolescence. “It’s a sarcoma, a rare and aggressive tumor that affects the soft parts. It came back in the knee after long, long years. It’s gone again”, he declared, specifying that “it’s not is not exactly the same sarcoma, but it is the same leg”.
Faced with the recurrence of his knee cancer, Matthieu Lartot will be subjected to various treatments in order to be treated. “There will first be chemotherapy. And then in a second, a fairly heavy operation on the sick limb”. If the host still does not know if his health will allow him to comment on the Rugby World Cup in France in the fall of 2023, an operation could well keep him away from the air for a while longer.
In an interview with Midi Olympique, published on April 23, 2023, Matthieu Lartot indicated that he will have to have his right leg amputated. “It’s a question of survival” he declared to our colleague Marc Duzan, because “some cells that we had irradiated did not disappear and a sarcoma three times larger than the first one appeared”.
According to comments quoted by L’Équipe.fr, the journalist gave more details. “The danger is that it spreads to other parts of the body …”, explaining this evil that has been eating away at him for months. “Pain, I have all my life in the leg but I got used to it. Except that there, they became unbearable…”. If the surgical operation should be established in three weeks, the father of the family will give himself the means to regain his mobility before the Rugby World Cup. An unfailing determination hailed by the entire profession, the world of sport and its fans on social networks.