The United States women’s team will not be coming to Starlight Stadium in August for the North American and Caribbean rugby sevens qualifying tournament for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
That’s a good thing for the Canadian women’s team, whose path to Paris 2024 just got easier Saturday with the U.S. qualifying for the Olympics based on its results in the Hong Kong Sevens.
The top four teams in the World Series season standings qualify directly for Paris and the U.S. has guaranteed itself one of those spots along with the respective Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016 Olympic champions New Zealand and Australia.
With the U.S. officially out of the qualifier scheduled for Langford, sa国际传媒’s biggest challengers this summer at Starlight Stadium for the regional berth into the Paris Olympics are expected to be world minnows Mexico and Jamaica.
The Canadian women, meanwhile, concluded a quirky day in Hong Kong by facing mighty New Zealand consecutively. Despite the 46-0 loss to the Black Ferns to close group play at 1-2, the Canadians advanced to a quarter-final match-up against the Kiwis, with the defending Olympic champions prevailing 45-14. Veteran Breanne Nicholas and newcomer Taejah Thompson scored the tries for world No. 8 sa国际传媒.
sa国际传媒, which opened on Friday with a gritty 5-0 loss to Great Britain and 22-5 victory over host Hong Kong with Thompson and University of Victoria Vikes star Krissy Scurfield scoring tries, was set to play the U.S. for fifth-place this morning.
The Canadian men, meanwhile, concluded group play by losing 40-7 to flash-quick Rio and Tokyo Olympic-champion Fiji. Will Percillier of Mill Bay, out of Brentwood College, will get to say he scored his first World Series try against the double Olympic gold medallists as he took an off-load pass from Victoria’s Lachlan Kratz. Oak Bay High-grad Kratz converted the try to complete sa国际传媒’s lone scoring play.
sa国际传媒 also lost 29-5 to Samoa, with Josiah Morra scoring his 19th try of the season, to complete group play at 0-3. sa国际传媒 opened Friday with a 17-7 loss to Argentina with Brennig Prevost of Victoria, a UVic Vikes player out of Glenlyon Norfolk School, scoring the try.
The Canadians, preparing for the North American and Caribbean Olympic men’s qualifier for Paris 2024 this summer also at Starlight Stadium, lost 17-0 to Ireland late Saturday in the bracket for ninth place.
Hong Kong is the granddaddy of sevens rugby and began the tradition of the kinetic crowd vibrancy that has become the hallmark of sevens.
