Sports journalist Matthieu Lartot, ready to fight cancer
A sports journalist from the France Télévisions group announced the relapse of his cancer. It must be amputated.
This is terrible news that affects the large family of the France Télévisions group. A sports journalist officiating on the chains of France 2 and France 3 has cancer. At 43, Matthieu Lartot, known for commentating on the rugby matches of the XV of France since 2009, has broken the silence around his health problems.
In a poignant interview granted At Parisian on April 18, the journalist from France Télévisions spoke bluntly about his knee cancer. “After the chemo, the surgeons will have to amputate my right leg: it’s a question of survival. I’m starting chemo on Monday. After that, I’ll have three weeks to rebuild my immunity that the first medications destroyed. Afterwards, it will be the surgical act and finally, the equipment and rehabilitation. Honestly, I take it as a release. This work, moreover, I have been doing it in my head for years »he confided.
“I take it as a release”
Matthieu Lartot has suffered from right knee cancer since he was 16 years old. Aware of his notoriety, he chose to take the lead and make the announcement himself.
“Since nowadays everything is known, I might as well announce it to you. 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 happened”said the journalist who will therefore be discreet from television sets to focus on his health.
Matthieu Lartot: his wife and children support him
Married for 11 years and father of two children (Jeanne, 11 and Noah, 16), Matthieu Lartot knows the importance of the mind and of family and loved ones in such complicated times. “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. he concluded, confident.
Shortly after the painful news, Matthieu Lartot also received the support of his colleagues, in particular François Galtier, with whom he worked.
Matthieu Lartot: his fight against cancer has lasted 26 years
During an interview with Paris Match, Matthieu Lartot explained that his knee tumor was discovered following an injury during a match. “We thought it was a sprained knee and from there a mass appeared inside my knee. We could have missed it and it developed in silence and it was more serious”he pointed out.
Surgeons then removed his knee and joint to fit him with a prosthesis. His right leg then had to be reduced by 2.5 cm due to a nosocomial infection. If Matthieu Lartot has gotten used to the pain in his right knee, they are getting more and more intense. “I’ve had it all my life in my leg, but year after year, I got used to it. Except that there, they quickly became unbearable “, he told the Parisian.
Last year, another journalist from France Télévisions also broke the silence around his cancer. Presenter Louis Laforge, 55, wanted to raise public awareness by talking openly about his fight against one “Golf Ball Sized Tumor”.
On the set of C to you in September 2022, the journalist had told how he discovered his illness: “Just before the summer of 2021, I was going on vacation and I didn’t want to leave with this question mark, this little discomfort, which was becoming a little pain. I went to see my GP, who gave me a CT scan. The radiologist showed me on the scanner a golf ball, which had nothing to do with this image normally. I had it there, it was kidney tumor” .
