Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: David Rogers / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE / Getty Images via AFP 22:17 p.m., May 24, 2023

New faces at the Musée Grévin. Antoine Dupont and Frédéric Michalak have entered the famous Parisian museum a few months before the start of the Rugby World Cup to be held in France. Their statues will enthrone a few meters from that of football Kylian Mbappé.

The scrum-half of the Blues Antoine Dupont and the former half-back of the XV of France Frédéric Michalak made their entrance Wednesday evening at the Grevin Museum in Paris, a little more than a hundred days before the start of the Rugby World Cup in France. "Frankly, it's disturbing to find yourself face to face with 'yourself'," said Dupont (26, 47 caps), whose wax statue wears the official outfit of the XV of France of which he is captain.

"Honestly, it's a crazy job," added the player, admiring, joking that he "had to take a red card (on November 12 against South Africa, following which he received a four-week suspension, reduced to two on appeal) in order to be able to take the first steps" for his double. Michalak (40 years, 77 caps), whose statue is dressed as a coach since he will join the coaching staff of Racing 92 next season, described as "super bizarre" the fact of being next to his double, that his four children, who came to Grevin, found "very similar", he said.

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Close to Mbappé

The France hosts from September 8 to October 28 the World Cup-2023, whose opening match at the Stade de France will oppose the Blues to the New Zealand All Blacks. The two players, emblematic figures of the France team as well as the Stade Toulousain about ten years apart, began posing for their wax doubles on November 14, according to the museum. The Parisian establishment, which claims more than 850,000 visitors per year, said in a statement that they had first lent themselves "to the game of photos, videos, 3D image captures, face and body measurements and hand molding".

It then took a second appointment "to check the plastiline modeling of the face", which was done, in the case of Antoine Dupont, in Marcoussis, at the National Rugby Centre, during the Six Nations Tournament. Dupont and Michalak joined other great figures of French rugby in Grévin: winger Adolphe Jauréguy (1898-1977, 31 caps), second line Lucien Mias (92 years, 29 caps) and third line Sébastien Chabal (45 years, 62 caps), converted as a television consultant.

Their doubles are in the sports district of the museum, not far from Kylian Mbappé (football), Zinedine Zidane (football), Camille Lacourt (swimming), Clarisse Agbegnenou (judo), Renaud Lavillénie (pole vault) or Martin Fourcade (biathlon).