Kenya have been a mainstay on the HSBC SVNS and are aiming to return on the first alternative following their relegation to the Challenger final 12 months, and so they bought off to the proper begin with victory in Dubai.
They had been made to work for the gold medal in a tough fought ultimate win over Chile which completed 12-5. Earlier within the day Kenya had overwhelmed Uruguay 21-5 within the semi-final whereas Chile reached the ultimate because of a 15-7 win over beforehand unbeaten Germany.
Uruguay, who alongside Kenya will showcase their abilities on the Olympic Video games Paris 2024, recovered from semi-final defeat to say the bronze medal with a 12-7 defeat of Germany.
China had been the dominant power within the girls’s competitors and secured gold with a 19-5 win over Kenya within the ultimate, gaining revenge for his or her 17-12 loss to the identical opposition in Friday’s pool match.
China has earlier cruised into the ultimate because of a 45-5 thrashing of Uganda within the semi-final, whereas Kenya noticed off Argentina by 17-0 within the second semi-final. Argentina had been spectacular all through the weekend and claimed the bronze because of a 36-10 win over Uganda.
Amid ecstatic celebrations in entrance of the big contingent of supporters, Kenya co-captain Tony Omondi mentioned: “We’re tremendous blissful. We knew this Challenger occasion in Dubai was very essential for us to begin on a excessive and now we should keep it up with the momentum till the final match.”
“It was a troublesome ultimate right this moment. Chile was a troublesome, bodily opponent so we needed to match them in all features and it got here out good for us. We should additionally congratulate our girls group as properly, each sport they performed earlier than us gave us the inspiration, so we needed to ship and due to them we’re going again dwelling with two medals.”
China girls’s participant Chen Keyi mentioned: “We’re blissful and so happy with our ladies and the way in which we performed to our requirements. Kenya is a really bodily group so I’m happy with our tackling and the way laborious we labored for one another. We hope we will continue learning, preserve taking part in to our approach and preserve successful within the subsequent tournaments.”
There’s extra to play for than ever earlier than on this 12 months’s Challenger with the competitors expanded to a few rounds and the highest 4 positioned males’s and ladies’s groups qualifying for the brand new promotion and relegation play-off competitors on the HSBC SVNS 2024 Grand Last in Madrid.
World Rugby Chief Competitions and Efficiency Officer Nigel Cass mirrored on a extremely profitable begin to the World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger 2024: “The opening spherical of the Challenger in Dubai was an amazing advert for the rising competitiveness and world progress of rugby sevens. With extremely aggressive matches all through, no unbeaten groups and semi-finalists from 4 completely different continents, it was an amazing demonstration of the potential for sevens to proceed to evolve and excite followers around the globe on the street to the Olympic Video games Paris 2024.”
“I want to thank the Dubai organisers for internet hosting a superb occasion on and off the pitch and prolong my congratulations to Kenya and China, and to all groups who contributed to such a top quality occasion, which has taken the Challenger to a brand new degree of competitiveness and efficiency. We sit up for subsequent spherical in Montevideo and to seeing which 4 males’s and ladies’s groups finally qualify for the SVNS promotion-relegation play-off in Madrid in June.”
The Challenger tournaments replicate the Olympic Video games competitors format, with the 12 groups drawn into three swimming pools of 4 groups every. The highest two from every pool in addition to the 2 finest third-placed finishers will qualify for the knockout phases with quarter-finals and
The Challenger was launched in February 2020 to spice up the event of rugby sevens throughout the globe and supply a transparent promotion pathway to achieve the highest degree of world rugby sevens for the quick format of the sport which has skilled large progress over the previous twenty years because the introduction of the worldwide sevens collection and turning into an Olympic sport on the Rio 2016 Video games.
The larger and higher than ever 2024 version of the Challenger consists of three rounds. Following the opener in Dubai the lads’s and ladies’s groups now transfer on to Estadio Charrúa in Montevideo, Uruguay on 8-10 March earlier than standalone girls’s and males’s occasions at Henryk Reyman’s Municipal Stadium in Krakow, Poland and Dantestadion in Munich, Germany respectively on 18-19 Could.
Followers across the globe can watch the motion on RugbyPass.TV.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of World Rugby.
