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France look to sprint specialist ahead of Singapore stop
By Joe Harvey
Ahead of the HSBC SVNS Series’ stops in Singapore and Perth, France have invited sprint coach Guy Ontanon back into camp.
Ontanon is a familiar face to the France Men’s Sevens squad. First invited into camp in 2020, he continued to work with the team until their 2024 Olympic Games gold medal in Paris.
Since the turn of the century, Ontanon has coached Muriel Hurtis to European and World Championships glory, and helped Ronald Pognon become the first Frenchman to run the 100m in less than 10 seconds.
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Able to offer his expertise in speed and running technique, head coach Benoît Baby has invited Ontanon back into fold to complement the team’s training at Marcoussis for the coming months.
“We decided to work on a major project with Guy Ontanon,” Baby told ffr.fr. “At each gathering, we will share our progress.
“I hope this work will pay off in the next tournaments, but especially in the long run, so we can conserve energy for support runs and do a bit more.”
“Guy is a speed specialist,” Stephen Parez-Edo Martin. “There are a lot of accelerations and running techniques on the field.
“It’s a little extra, it still brings expertise into our game. Of course, we all want to progress in speed, and doing it with him is a pleasure.”
Two legs into the 2025/26 HSBC SVNS Series season and France sit fourth overall in the standings.
Stops in Dubai and Cape Town have been categorised by their Day 2 drops in performance.
After graduating from the group stages, France lost all four of their knockout fixtures to end the opening two legs with back-to-back fourth-place finishes.
“We are one of the two teams to have left the pools in both tournaments,” Baby said. “We lack a little emotional consistency to win the semifinals, but we produce very good things.
“We will continue to move forward. This week, it’s the physical recovery, starting to live races again with intensity. At the end of the week, we will work with great intensity on the collective.”
Ahead of Singapore, France have been grouped with New Zealand, Australia and Argentina in what is set to be an extremely challenging Pool B.
