Olivier Klemenczak

Olivier Klemenczak signed a three-year pre-contract with Racing 92 in December 2017 while playing second-division rugby for Dax. He established himself in his first season in the top flight and in Europe, and Fabien Galthié brought him into the France squad in the autumn of 2020.

Centre at Pau, 1.84m and 88kg, and 30 years old.

Born at Cormeilles-en-Parisis to two athletics club members, he moved to Soustons in the Landes at one. He started there at five. His maternal grandfather Victor Larroudé was a rugby league international and his father, a former physical trainer, coached him through it.

Dax took him as a schoolboy in 2011 and Richard Dourthe gave him a professional debut in 2014-15, seven matches in his first season, alongside a technical diploma in water management.

France used him at under-19 level, then lost him for ten months to a back injury before he could go further. A return in time for the 2016 junior world championship brought two appearances off the bench in a tournament France finished ninth in.

Before leaving Dax he played sevens for France at the Singapore leg of the world series and for the Baby Barbarians, the selection of the best players in the second division, in a one-point defeat by Georgia in Tbilisi.

The first Supersevens tournament went to Racing with him in the side, and they reached the final of the second. A quick, light midfielder whose Top 14 career began three years later than most of the players he came through with.