Gaël Drean

Gaël Dréan was never picked for the Brittany regional side. The verdict was that he was too slight. He has since been clocked at nearly 37 kilometres an hour in a match, which is roughly what Kylian Mbappé runs, and capped by France.

Winger at Toulon, 1.84m and 84kg, and 25 years old.

Lorient raised him, in a sporting family. His father Michel played football in the third division and was a world student runner-up with France. Gymnastics and athletics came before a school taster session pointed him at rugby at about seven.

The route up was through the amateur leagues. Plouzané in the fourth tier brought eighteen tries in seventeen matches. Rennes in the third brought fourteen in twenty-three, the leading total in the division, and a national title against Hyères Carqueiranne La Crau. Sevens gave him the visibility: a national amateur title with Seventies and the 2021 Supersevens with the French Barbarians.

Pierre Mignoni and Franck Azéma persuaded him to take the jump straight from the third tier to the Top 14 in 2022. He started his debut against Clermont, scored, and won it 30-29. By the midpoint of 2024-25 he had ten tries in nine league matches and led the competition.

Fabien Galthié called him into a 42-man squad in January 2025 and capped him against Italy in February 2026, in a Six Nations that France won.

In May 2026 his club announced that he would undergo a preventive cardiac procedure for a genetic condition present since birth and identified at his medical when he signed in 2022.