Renewed, the Rugby Sevens World Series stepped on the in-goal of the season. The innovative format of “Final 8″ promoted the award of two teams that had not broken through either as leaders of the annual table or the dominators in terms of the number of stages won: the men’s team from France and the women’s team from Australia won the cup at the Civitas Metropolitano Madrid stadium 51 days before the start of the Olympic tournament.
Sixth in the overall position, France, boosted in 2024 by a glorious appearance by Antoine Dupont, chosen as the “Rookie of the season”, author of seven tries in three contested stages (in all of them he got on the podium) and a breakthrough in the second half of the final in which he ranked the team and provided key assistance, minimized and beat Argentina 19-5 (who didn’t have Marcos Moneta), the best placed team after the previous seven stages, the top scorer of tries (156) and points (1016), to be crowned for the first time on the world circuit and double their status as a candidate for the Olympic title in their capital.
Four are now the Seven Series trophies won by the Australian women’s team. The Olympic champions in Rio 2016, second in a regular season that included the two initial awards and whose least auspicious performance was the fourth place in Vancouver, were crowned undefeated and with the record of 150 tries on the circuit achieved by Maddison Levi (the athlete who did it the fastest, at the age of 22), chosen as the best of the 26-7 victory against France in the final and the top gunner in the competition.
Fiji and New Zealand won the bronze medals in the men’s and women’s categories. The men from Uruguay and Kenya and the women from China were promoted from the Challenger Series and will compete in the next edition of the competition in the top flight.
In keeping with the world circuit, the Olympic tournament will bring together 12 men’s teams and an equal number of women’s teams. The first will be played between Wednesday 24, two days before the opening ceremony (same starting date as football), and Saturday, July 27. There will be no activity on the opening Friday 26th. Three days of action will also be proposed by the women’s tournament, to be held between Sunday 28 and Tuesday 30 July.
The dispute system equalizes them: three groups of four teams, of which the first two from each zone and the two best third will qualify for the quarterfinals. The four eliminated teams will pursue ninth place. Those who are defeated in the quarterfinals will compete for fifth place. The last two places - one per branch - will be up for grabs in the Monaco repechage tournaments between June 21 and 23, in the most important event on the remaining road to the French capital.
The men of Fiji will try to impose their nickname of two-time defending Olympic champion while the women of Australia and New Zealand, enshrined in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, climbed to the highest step of the podium since the reappearance of rugby in the Games and will seek to repeat at the Stade de France, the imminent Olympic stadium that appears to host two contests with open favouritism.
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