Canadian men’s rugby sevens head coach Sean White of Victoria returns to the scene of an old wound next year in his attempt to get sa国际传媒 into the 2024 Paris Olympic Games through the last-chance qualifier June 21-23 at Stade Louis II in Monaco.
The venue and dates for the 12-team Olympic repechage tournament were announced Friday by World Rugby and it will be a brutal route for sa国际传媒 against the likes of Great Britain, South Africa, Tonga and Spain also vying for the 12th and final berth into the Paris Olympics, along with Brazil, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Uganda.
The repechage is being held in the Monaco venue where sa国际传媒 failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics through the last-chance tournament that year.
“We know that horror story,” said White.
Now is the chance to rectify the plotline in a sequel.
“Paris is the goal, and we are not shying away from that, and it will take that innate Canadian grit and relentlessness to get there,” said White, who has guided sa国际传媒 to core status on the World Series tour.
“We will build through the [World Series] season with small, incremental changes and improvements.”
White came out of the Oak Bay High Barbs and the James Bay Athletic Association to have a standout international playing career for sa国际传媒 with 27 caps in XVs, including at the 2011 World Cup, and 32 World Series tournaments played in sevens.
Wiry but tenacious, he played in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and won gold medals at the 2011 Guadalajara and 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games. There are highs, but also will come the lows, in any career as White was the last cut on the 2016 Canadian team that went to Monaco for the Rio Olympics qualifier. White will return to the scene of that personal, and larger Canadian, disappointment when he leads sa国际传媒 into the Paris 2024 Olympic qualifying tournament in Monaco.
sa国际传媒 qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics by winning the North American and Caribbean regional qualifying tournament in George Town, Cayman Islands, with a now-retired veteran group that included Connor Braid of Victoria, Harry Jones and former University of Victoria Vikes great Nathan Hirayama, the latter who carried the Canadian flag into the opening ceremony at Tokyo. But the Americans weren’t at the regional qualifier in the Cayman Islands because they had qualified automatically for Tokyo by placing in the top-four of the 2019-20 HSBC World Series standings.
The Americans, however, did not qualify via the World Series route for the 2024 Paris Olympics. They did it last summer by winning the North American and Caribbean Olympic qualifier held at Starlight Stadium with U.S. legend Perry Baker really rubbing it in by waving bye-bye to the packed grandstand in Langford as he sped by to score a key breakaway try against sa国际传媒 en route to a 24-14 victory in the championship game. Second-place sa国际传媒 and third-place Mexico earned the regional berths into the last-chance qualifier in Monaco, where White and sa国际传媒 will look to make amends for 2016.
The Canadian women’s sevens team, also based in Langford, has qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by winning its North American and Caribbean qualifying tournament last summer at home at Starlight Stadium before an amped-up crowd. Unlike the men, the Canadian women were aided by the U.S. not being at Starlight because the American women qualified directly for Paris with a top-four placing in the World Series season.
