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 yr, they usually bought off to the right begin with victory in Dubai.
They have been made to work for the gold medal in a tough fought last win over Chile which completed 12-5. Earlier within the day Kenya had crushed Uruguay 21-5 within the semi-final whereas Chile reached the ultimate due to 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 have been the dominant pressure within the girls’s competitors and secured gold with a 19-5 win over Kenya within the last, 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 due to a 45-5 thrashing of Uganda within the semi-final, whereas Kenya noticed off Argentina by 17-0 within the second semi-final. Argentina have been spectacular all through the weekend and claimed the bronze due to 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 glad. We knew this Challenger occasion in Dubai was very essential for us to begin on a excessive and now we should keep on with the momentum till the final event.”
“It was a troublesome last as we speak. Chile was a troublesome, bodily opponent so we needed to match them in all elements and it got here out good for us. We should additionally congratulate our women group as properly, each sport they performed earlier than us gave us the inspiration, so we needed to ship and because of them we’re going again house with two medals.”
China girls’s participant Chen Keyi mentioned: “We’re glad and so happy with our ladies and the best way we performed to our requirements. Kenya is a really bodily group so I’m happy with our tackling and the way onerous we labored for one another. We hope we are able to continue to learn, preserve taking part in to our means and preserve successful within the subsequent tournaments.”
There’s extra to play for than ever earlier than on this yr’s Challenger with the competitors expanded to a few rounds and the highest 4 positioned males’s and girls’s groups qualifying for the brand new promotion and relegation play-off competitors on the HSBC SVNS 2024 Grand Ultimate 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 a fantastic advert for the growing competitiveness and world development of rugby sevens. With extremely aggressive matches all through, no unbeaten groups and semi-finalists from 4 completely different continents, it was a fantastic demonstration of the potential for sevens to proceed to evolve and excite followers world wide on the highway 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 lengthen 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 look ahead to subsequent spherical in Montevideo and to seeing which 4 males’s and girls’s groups in the end 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 greatest 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 enormous development over the previous twenty years because the introduction of the worldwide sevens sequence and changing 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 girls’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.
