{"id":503457,"date":"2026-02-25T16:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503457\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T16:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T16:07:09","slug":"olympic-champion-joins-la-rochelle-as-medical-joker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/503457\/","title":{"rendered":"Olympic champion joins La Rochelle as medical joker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

La Rochelle boss Ronan O\u2019Gara<\/a> has added Olympic gold medallist Andy Timo<\/a> to his squad for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old joins the two-time Investec Champions Cup<\/a> winners alongside 22-year-old Fijian, Watisoni Waqanisaravi, who arrives from Georgian club Kazbegi.<\/p>\n

Timo, who operates in the back-row, will join the club from Monday 9 March and has prior 15-a-side experience in Pro D2<\/a> with RC Massy<\/a> and in the Top 14<\/a> with Stade Fran\u00e7ais.<\/p>\n

Since he made his France<\/a> Sevens debut in 2023, Timo has been the heartbeat of Benoit Baby\u2019s squad as a high work rate and powerful forward.<\/p>\n

A 2023 World Rugby U20 Championship<\/a> winner, the 21-year-old helped France to their first ever HSBC SVNS Series title in 2024 and was a member of the side that won Olympic gold at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.<\/p>\n

So far this season La Rochelle have struggled to establish themselves in the French top flight, are currently 10th in the league table and have not won a game in any competition since the start of January.<\/p>\n

After the club\u2019s 43-33 home loss against Montpellier<\/a> last time out, O\u2019Gara described it as a \u201clow-point\u201d during his tenure at the Stade Marcel-Deflandre.<\/p>\n

Recently the club have been linked with 10-cap Scotland<\/a> fly-half \u00a0Ben Healy, who will leave Edinburgh<\/a> Rugby after three years in the Scottish capital.<\/p>\n

Timo will be available to his new club the day after the Vancouver stop of the HSBC SVNS Series concludes.<\/p>\n

France are currently fourth in the HSBC SVNS Series after four stops. Their best performance of the season came in Singapore, where they lost out to Fiji<\/a> in the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"La Rochelle boss Ronan O\u2019Gara has added Olympic gold medallist Andy Timo to his squad for the remainder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-503457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}