Rugby-mad New Zealand celebrated their men’s and women’s sevens teams winning the world titles on Sunday in Moscow, but no-one was taking Olympic gold medals in Rio for granted.
The All Blacks Sevens beat rugby heavyweights England 33-0 in their final to clinch their first world title since 2001, while the women’s team beat Canada 29-12 to win their first.
The dual victory means that New Zealand now hold the men’s and women’s World Cups for both formats, along with the sevens’ world series titles earlier this year.
Photo: AFP
With the abbreviated form of the game due to make its debut at the Rio Olympics in 2016, the New Zealand Rugby Union and High Performance Sport New Zealand have poured resources into both programs in an attempt to win both gold medals on offer.
The men’s program has long been at the top of the game, winning 11 of the 14 world series circuits, though the gap is narrowing with teams like Kenya and the US all capable of causing upsets.
Kenya, who have made massive strides, finished fourth in the World Cup, while New Zealand needed a late David Raikuna try to beat the US in the pool phase in Moscow.
“The days of when it was us and Fiji dominating are over,” sevens captain, Eric Rush said before the tournament began.
“I don’t think it deserved to be in the Olympics because there were only two teams that could win it,” he said. “Now there at least five or six who could win and that is what you want and teams like Kenya, on their day, they’ll win the gold medal if you’re not careful.”
It is the women’s game, however, that has made the largest strides in reducing the gaps between teams, with the US beating Spain 10-5 in the playoff for third shortly before Sean Horan’s team beat Canada in the final.
Canada had only made the semi-finals after Ghislaine Landry scored a try with 13 seconds remaining to beat Russia 15-12 in the quarter-finals, where Spain had upset 2009 world champions Australia 14-10.
Despite New Zealand clinching both titles at the World Cup, Horan said the tournament was merely a stepping stone towards Rio.
“We still have a long way to go,” he said. “It’s like climbing Everest, but we’re not even at base camp yet. We’re still walking through the villages saying hello to the kids.”
New Zealand implemented a talent identification program early last year that produced the group of players that won the World Cup, which has been emulated by other countries with less pedigree in rugby, but bigger Olympic budgets.
As part of the program, Horan cast a wide net before he selected his final squad, drawing on players with varied sporting backgrounds with top-level netball players Kayla McAlister and Portia Woodman both scoring tries in the final.
However, he had only dipped his toes into the talent pool of players available, he said, and he said the side to contest the next women’s world series could be different from that which won the title.
“We are leaving girls behind who have strong development potential. We are leaving injured players behind, but it’s not about this World Cup or Rio,” he said. “It’s about the game itself and what we want to do.”
“We want to be world leaders and want to reach for Everest,” Horan said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier