This Saturday, the French rugby sevens team broke the Olympic hegemony of the Fiji Islands, champions of the previous two Games, winning 28-7 in the Paris2024 final thanks to a devastating second half.
The host nation’s team, the first outside Fiji to win a gold medal, went into the break tied 7-7 but proved unstoppable in the second period, which ended with a partial 21-0 lead ahead of the approving eyes of French President Emmanuel Macron.
The history of Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, which ended with the Fijians triumphing in the final over Great Britain (43-7) and New Zealand (27-12) respectively, looked to be repeating itself when Jozeva Talakolo arrived for rehearsal just after two minutes and Iovan Teba’s transformation put the two-time champions 7-0 up.
The island nation’s players would hardly have believed it if they had been told that they would not pick up any more points before the end of the match played at the Estadio de França, but that is exactly what happened, with the hosts equalising through a Jefferson-Lee Joseph try and a Ryan Rebbaj conversion.
The second part was one-sided, with two essays by Antoine Dupont, the brightest star of the French Seven, and one by Aaron Grandidier, as well as the respective transformations of Paulin Riva and Jean Pascal Barrak, who offered France its first Olympic title in their “Games”.
In the bronze medal match, South Africa went into the break trailing Australia 7–5, but turned the tables to win 26–19, taking advantage of the now-timely compensation by redacting the Rio 2016 results, the edition in which the sport was introduced to the Olympic programme.