14. Lucas CANEDA

Lucas Caneda's Bio

Lucas Caneda Life and Career Highlights.

When Lucas Caneda discovered rugby at the age of five years old, he knew he had found his calling. So when he hit the relatively average height of 175 cm (small by rugby standards), he wasn’t about to let the naysayers telling him he was too short stop him. Instead, he stuck his head down and worked twice as hard as anyone else.

Fortunately, the hard work and dedication paid off. In 2013, Lucas was selected to play for the Buenos Aires 7s team — a team with which he would experience an early career high, taking out the Argentinian national championships that same year.

However, things were never meant to be easy for Lucas, and, in 2014, he suffered what many thought would be a career-ending knee injury. After all, not many players can manage a return to the pitch following major surgeries and prolonged recovery periods.

But Lucas had defied the odds before, and, once again, he set out to prove everyone wrong. He stuck his head down, ignored doctor orders to take it easy, and soon he made an almost miraculous recovery.

Come 2015, Lucas was back on the pitch playing with Buenos Aires XV after just making it to that year’s trials. The hard work and determination had payed off and, come the end of the season, Lucas and the team took out the championship.

Always hungry for more, Lucas decided to relocate to France following the 2015 season, where he landed in the Pro D2 division playing as a winger for Provence Rugby. Here, his speed and aggressiveness quickly won everyone over, and he established himself as one of the club’s best and brightest players.

Unfortunately, the team was downgraded to Federal 1 the following season, leaving the doors open for Soyaux-Angouleme to recruit Lucas, where he would once again join the Pro D2 division for another two seasons (2017-2019).

After a short, Covid-interrupted stint at SC Mazamet in 2019-2020, Lucas joined Sarlat Rugby Team in Sarlat-la-Canéda, where he continues to extend his professional career on and off the pitch.

Off the pitch, Lucas brings the same determined, hard-working nature to bear in his entrepreneurial endeavors. Along with several private ventures of his own, including a catering company, Lucas was instrumental as a business leader in Sarlat Rugby’s professionalization at Uniqorn incubator.

These days, Lucas is determined to take the lessons learned during Sarlat Rugby’s professionalization and offer them to other sports teams. This has seen him co-founding his latest venture, ChallengerX — a sports startup dedicated to transforming amateur and semi-professional sports clubs from Davids into Goliaths.

This past season marks Lucas Caneda’s second full season with the Sarlat Rugby Team. The team’s current objective is clear: to climb the ranks over the years to come. And taking Sarlat’s name and reputation, and their love of the sport of rugby to the professional divisions! The team also plans to open a training center, building on, and building up, the potential of its local talent roster, trained up from their earliest years within the club.

Sarlat Rugby recently finished its first season without a single loss since the club’s founding back in 1903, with a perfect 22 wins for 22 games played.

The addition of players like Lucas Caneda, Hemani Paea, Ikapote Fono and Dato Okriashvili has turned a team that used to used to play the bottom brackets into a contender qualified for the French Federal 2 championship finals and a brand that has secured a global following, with new fans hailing from every corner of the world.

This performance on the field has attracted the attention of big sports brands like Samurai. Based just across the channel in the U.K., Samurai Sportswear is a leading international kit supplier to sporting clubs from Australia and New Zealand to the English Premiership Rugby division. And, in it has been doing so for the last 25 years. And, in 2021, Samurai came onboard as Sarlat Rugby Team’s new kit supplier.

When word that Samurai Sportswear would potentially become the new kit sponsor for the team first spread, there was more than a little enthusiasm from some of the players. The current kit at the time left quite a lot to be desired. And, while not everyone knew who Samurai was at first, many players did.