France followed up its impressive win against pre-tournament favorite England with a scrappy 35-22 win against Italy in the Six Nations on Sunday.
It was a vastly improved performance from tenacious Italy, routed 42-0 by defending champion Wales last weekend. France moved level on nine points with Ireland and are top on points difference, but this was a patchy performance despite five French tries.
Right winger Teddy Thomas, flanker Charles Ollivon and No. 8 Grégory Alldritt crossed with left winger Matteo Minozzi getting Italy's first try — all in the first half.
France rugby player Gregory Alldritt, foreground, is congratulated after scoring a try during the Six Nations international rugby union match between France and Italy at the Stade de France stadium, in Saint Denis, north of Paris, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2020. (AP PhotoThibault Camus)
It was dour after the break until silky flyhalf Romain Ntamack woke up a sleepy Stade de France with a fine finish in the 60th minute, cutting through the defense after scrumhalf Antoine Dupont and Thomas set him up and earn France an attacking bonus point.
Replacement scrumhalf Baptiste Serin scored the game's best try late on, taking a tap penalty, breaking a couple of tackles and running onto his own grubber kick to dive over for a converted score.
With winds swirling at around 90 kilometers (56 miles) per hour because of Storm Ciara hitting northern Europe, handling and kicking was more difficult.
France rugby player Charles Ollivon, center, in action during the Six Nations international rugby union match between France and Italy at the Stade de France stadium, in Saint Denis, north of Paris, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2020. (AP PhotoThibault Camus)
Ntamack quickly put France on the board with a penalty, then set up Thomas for the opening try in the seventh minute with a clever grubber kick.
Swirling wind took his conversion and a 15th-minute penalty wide of the posts.
It was a brief reprieve for Italy, though, as Dupont launched an attack and France's forwards dragged captain Ollivon into the left corner in the 18th. It was his third try in two games, following his brace in last Sunday's 24-17 win against Rugby World Cup runner-up England.
Only the wind was thwarting Les Tricolors at this stage, with Ntamack's difficult conversion from the left neatly sailing through before a gust slowed the ball down and sent it on to the post.
Then France's intensity dropped.
A missed tackle by Dupont gave Italy room down the left flank, and Minozzi scampered through. Flyhalf Tommaso Allan converted it and slotted over a penalty to bring Italy back in to the game.
As a result France didn't run the next penalty it got, with Ntamack instead slotting over an insurance penalty. Just before halftime, the lively Dupont sent Alldritt clear with a lopping pass to the left wing and Ntamack's conversion hit the left and right post before going over for 23-10.
Italy started the second half strongly, with a driving maul forcing the home side into conceding a penalty that Allan — a talented attacking half but an inconsistent kicker — sliced wide.
France's missed tackles won't have pleased Shaun Edwards, the former rugby league star now in charge of the French defense. But the Italians couldn't convert pressure into points and the 20-year-old Ntamack punished them with his second international try.
It didn't finish Italy off.
The Azurri hit back as replacement prop Federico Zani burrowed over, following a smart lineout take from No. 8 Braam Steyn and another impressive driving maul.
France coach Fabien Galthié sensed complacency, so he changed his halves and the skillful Serin scored. But sloppiness let Italy get a third try through right winger Mattia Bellini.
Galthié and Edwards will work on the defending before facing Wales in Cardiff on Feb. 22.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
