Fiji won the gold medal in the rugby sevens in the 2016 Olympic Games, currently taking place in Rio!
They beat Great Britain, 43-7. It is actually the first ever Olympic gold medal won by Fiji, in any event. It’s apt that Fiji won the sevens gold as they have been the leader in rugby sevens for many years. Australia won the women’s sevens gold.
It is the first time that rugby sevens has ever been played at the Olympic Games and also the first time rugby has featured at the Games since 1924. One of the reasons that rugby was reintroduced to the Olympics was that it was believed that it would give some of the smaller countries a better chance at achieving a medal. Obviously, this has proven correct.
The Olympic sevens has already seen some great upsets, including Japan beating New Zealand, for the first time, in any form of rugby. Ireland is one country that doesn’t have a permanent sevens team and thus failed to qualify for the Rio tournament.
An Ireland team did compete in the first ever International rugby sevens tournament, where they beat New Zealand (which Ireland have yet to manage in the 15-a-side game), Australia and Scotland before eventually losing to England. The team included several illustrious players, including Fergus Slattery, Mike Gibson, Vinny Becker and Kevin Mays.
Although rugby has barely been a part of the modern Olympic Games, the two are linked further back than most people realise.
It was actually the game of rugby that helped inspire the reemergence of the Olympics, back in 1896. Pierre de Fredy, Baron de Coubertin, was a French aristocratic who visited England several times during the 1880s.
He was impressed by the physical feats and display of sportsmanship he saw while watching several rugby matches during his visits. He believed that sport helped build strength of character, a belief he shared with the Ancient Greeks.
The Olympic Games
The Olympic Games originated in Ancient Greece, around 776 BC. It was held to honour Zeus, the king of the gods. The tournament took place in Olympia, Greece, every four years (known as an Olympiad). Athletes competed in events and were awarded laurel wreaths or crowns.
The Games grew to consist of several events, including running, discus throwing, chariot racing, wrestling and boxing. Originally the Games were only open to free Greek men. Like today, there was much honour and fame to be achieved by success in the Games.
Unfortunately, also much like today, the Ancient Games were not immune to scandal either, with reports of athletes taking bribes to deliberately lose competitions. Some were bribed to change home states to compete for a rival city. Judges were also not above accepting monetary gain to influence their decisions.
The Games continued through the years even after the Roman Occupation of Greece, but declined in importance and soon began to lose their status. There is a famous story that the Emperor Nero competed in a chariot race in one of the Games (circa 67 AD). He was thrown from his chariot and unable to finish the race, but he decided that he would have won if he hadn’t been thrown so awarded the wreath to himself.
After Emperor Constantine essentially converted the whole of the Roman Empire to Christianity (circa 313 AD) the Games became threatened due to their celebration of a pagan god. The Emperor Theodosius effectively signed the death knell for the Games when he outlawed pagan festivals and rituals in 393 AD. The Games died out soon after.
Revival
There were some attempts to revive the Games, including in Greece itself, but none of these events were truly international (sporting events in Greece were only open to Greek athletes), so they are ignored by most historians. It is Pierre de Coubertin who gets the credit for reviving the Olympics as we know them today.
The Baron de Coubertin had been born into an aristocratic French family. From an early age, he had believed that athletic achievement was something to be cultivated, which went against the teaching in France at the time, which taught that intelligence was the key to a person’s character.
As a child, de Coubertin had read a number of English schoolboy novels, including Tom Brown’s School Days in which he was impressed with the notion of athletic achievement, and the effectiveness of sport in character building. He travelled to England a number of times in the 1880s and visited several schools there, including Rugby School.
Like the Ancient Greeks themselves, he believed that sports could help set the body and mind at equilibrium and also that sports were a much better use of people’s time. He followed through on his ideas in two significant ways: by reintroducing the Olympic Games, and by helping popularise the game of rugby in his home country of France.
Although rugby existed in France at the time, brought over by English ex-pats, de Coubertin introduced the game into several school establishments. He refereed the final of the first-ever French club championship, in 1892. de Coubertin’s contributions to rugby in France and elsewhere were recognized in 2007 when he was inducted into the World Rugby (formerly IRB) Hall of Fame.
“What is admirable in football (rugby), is the perpetual mix of individualism and discipline, the necessity for each man to think, anticipate, take a decision and at the same time subordinate one’s reasoning, thoughts and decisions to those of the captain. And even the referee’s whistle stopping a player for a ‘fault’ one teammate has made and he hasn’t seen, tests his character and patience. For all that, foot-ball is truly the reflection of life, a lesson experimenting in the real world, a first-rate educational tool.” Taken from an essay de Coubertin wrote about rugby in 1896,
De Coubertin set up the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1892 and the first of the modern Olympics was held in Athens, in 1896.
Although, de Coubertin was a keen supporter of rugby, his enthusiasm for the game was not shared by other members of the IOC, and only four Olympic Games featured rugby as a competitive sport: 1900, 1908, 1920 and 1924.
In 1900, the Games were held in France and three teams competed in the inaugural Olympic rugby competition. Club teams from France, Germany and the UK contested, with the club from France winning (almost by default as the Germany and UK teams never played each other, as the UK team had to return home to England.)
The 1908 Games, held in Britain, saw Australia win the gold, beating the only other competing nation, England. In 1920, the United States won gold, after beating France. Again, only two nations eventually competed. Some nations had agreed to participate but then pulled out.
1924 was the last Olympic Games to feature 15-man rugby and the gold was won by America, again after beating France and Romania. An exhibition rugby tournament took place in Germany in 1936 before the Berlin Games but is not officially recognised as an Olympic event.
(1924 is also the first year that the Winter Olympics took place, with the Games becoming known as the Summer Olympics).
There had been attempts to reintroduce rugby to the Olympics in the ensuing years, never with much success. It was only in the 1990s when the possibility seemed to exist (ironically enough as rugby began to lose its amateur status), and it has only been realised this year.
While rugby has only featured in four Olympic Games, some rugby players have achieved Olympic distinction, while competing in other events.
Eric Liddell was a Scottish winger who won a bronze (in the 200 metres) and a gold medal (in the 400 metres) at the 1924 Olympics. He had originally excelled at the 100 metres but refused to compete in any event held on a Sunday, due to his devout Christian beliefs (his story is chronicled in the film, Chariots Of Fire).
Ken Jones was a Welsh and British and Irish Lions’ winger, who won a Silver Medal at the 1948 Olympics’ 4-100 metre relay event.
Nigel Walker was a Welsh winger who competed in the 1984 Games’ in hurdling, reaching the semi-final.
Irish back row Victor Costello competed in the 1992 Olympics as a shot-putter.
Probably the greatest all-round sportsman in history was Stanley Harris. He was born in South Africa but educated in England. After been badly injured during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, he was eventually able to resume his rugby playing at his club, where he set try-scoring records. He committed himself to play rugby for England so he had to decline an invitation to join the 1920 Great Britain Olympic Team as a pentathlete.
He returned to South Africa in 1921 and played for Transvaal. He excelled at trials for the international team but had to turn down the invitation to play for the Springboks as he had athletic commitments. He won the Transvaal 440-yard hurdles and also became South African light heavyweight boxing champion (and runner up in the heavyweight division).
Returning to England in 1923, he broke his leg playing in a trial game and took up ballroom dancing to exercise it. He and his partner went on to win the waltz division of the World Amateur Championships in London.
Once his leg healed fully, he returned to South Africa where he was invited to join the 1924 South African Olympic team as a boxer. He turned the invitation down to play for the British and Irish Lions, who were touring South Africa at the time. He played in 15 games and 2 Tests on the tour, scoring four tries overall.
After retiring from rugby he took up tennis, playing in trials for the British Davis Cup team in 1929 and playing in Doubles for South Africa, versus Germany in 1931. He also took up polo, where he represented Great Britain at an international tournament in France. He returned to fight in the Second World War, where he was a POW forced to work on the Japanese railway in Siam. An incredible athlete.
12 countries competed in this year’s Olympics sevens, in both the men’s and women’s competition. Sevens is also planned to take place during the 2020 Olympics.
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