Sevens rugby race to Paris heats up

Because the sevens marketing campaign continues apace, the race for each the Sequence title and Olympic qualification is taking form.

New Zealand reigned supreme within the males’s and ladies’s tournaments on the Sydney Sevens per week in the past to consolidate their place on the prime of each standings.

The All Blacks Sevens are additionally prime of the pile, having performed 5 of 11 males’s tournaments, and their first gold medal of the season has enabled them to open up a nine-point cushion on overwhelmed Cup finalists South Africa.

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After all, the title just isn’t the one prize on provide in 2023 and leads to Sydney have had an equally telling impression on the race for the highest 4, and a spot on the Paris 2024 Olympics in France.

Beneath we recap what the weekend’s occasions at Allianz Stadium imply for the season forward.

Following runners-up finishes in Cape City and Hamilton, it proved to be third time fortunate for the All Blacks Sevens as they gained their first gold medal of the 2023 Sequence.

With six tournaments to play, victory offers the All Blacks Sevens a powerful lead on the prime of the standings.

The All Blacks Sevens are the fifth completely different males’s gold medallists in 5 tournaments and their nine-point benefit over the Blitzboks is much from unassailable with greater than half the season to go.

ALSO READ: Blitzboks humbled as New Zealand win gold in Sevens Sydney

Equally, their grip on Olympic qualification just isn’t as tight as it might first seem. The groups that end within the prime 4 of each the boys’s and ladies’s 2023 Sequence will take their place on the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Nevertheless, with hosts France, already assured to play at their residence Video games, at the moment fourth within the standings, the ticket would switch to the fifth-placed staff.

Because it stands within the males’s desk, that staff is Fiji following 5 occasions, with Ben Gollings’ facet tied on 67 factors with sixth-placed Argentina. That 18-point hole might slender considerably had been the All Blacks Sevens to undergo a lack of kind in Los Angeles subsequent month.

The aggressive nature of the 2023 males’s Sequence was highlighted in Sydney because the USA dropped from second to seventh on the again of their ninth-place semi-final defeat to Los Pumas Sevens, the winners per week earlier in Hamilton.

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With a most 132 factors on provide throughout the remaining six males’s tournaments of the Sequence, solely 10 factors separate Samoa in third from ninth-placed Eire, who proceed to place distance between them and the groups under.

A podium end from Eire, Australia or the USA in Los Angeles would catapult them proper again into rivalry not just for Olympics qualification however the total title as nicely.

On the different finish of the standings, Japan discover themselves because the lowest-ranked core staff, 18 factors adrift of Uruguay (24 factors), who occupy eleventh place and potential security.

Whichever core staff finishes lowest within the 2023 Sequence can be relegated to the World Rugby Sevens Challenger Sequence 2024, whereas these ranked twelfth to 14th will compete in opposition to the Challenger Sequence 2023 winner for the twelfth and remaining place on the 2024 Sequence.

Kenya (21 factors), Spain (18) and Canada (14) are additionally at risk of dropping their core staff standing with six tournaments to play.