Why the inclusion of rugby sevens is a shrewd move from the IOC.

   For the first time since 1924, in reflection of its status as one of the world’s fastest growing sports, rugby returns to the Olympic arena this summer. Rio de Janeiro will play host to 24 teams – both men’s and women’s – competing to be crowned Olympic champions in rugby sevens, the XV-a-side game’s younger, quicker, sleeker sibling. 

  Rugby’s Olympic renaissance is intriguing, if not particularly controversial. The International Olympic Committee voted overwhelmingly in favour of reinstating rugby as an Olympic sport, as it garnered 81 votes out of 90. However, the reservations that dogged the campaign to include golf – this year’s other Olympic inductee – in this summer’s games have also been applied to rugby. Namely, are the Olympics going to represent the apex of rugby’s quadrennial calendar? Or will it be an also-ran event? Essentially, the question that needs answering is this: do we have another Olympic football tournament on our hands, or something more substantial?

   The smart money is on the latter, and this is due largely to the format of the game that has been included. Whilst sevens is by no means unpopular, it does not attract the same global audience as the XV-a-side game. As a result, World Rugby’s decision to recalibrate the four-year cycle to ensure that the Olympic and World Cup Sevens tournaments take equal precedence makes the kind of sense that it simply would not for the larger format. The Rugby World Cup is as established as they come, and any challenge to its primacy as the number one tournament would have been viewed with extreme scepticism. To the sevens world, however, this summer in Rio is a big deal.

   The squad selections, particularly from the Great Britain camp, reflect this perfectly. Whilst much was made of the potential to include such global XV-a-side stars as Stuart Hogg, George North and James Haskell, coach Simon Amor has gone for an almost exclusively sevens-specialist squad. This may lack the wow factor of South Africa’s decision to name Bryan Habana, or New Zealand’s inclusion of Sonny Bill Williams, but what this ensures is that for those twelve players who are on the plane from London to Rio, this competition is the pinnacle of their sport. As a result, we can expect to see the passion, desire and commitment to succeed that epitomises the Olympic spirit. It is hard to envisage Habana and Williams – who have won more or less everything there is to win in rugby union – showing the same.    

Ed Capstick