The Stade Vélodrome in Marseille will host the Top 14 final between Toulouse and Bordeaux-Bègles on Friday, June 28, with the winner seeing their name engraved on the prestigious Brennus Shield. This is the first time that the final will be held in the Phocaean city, as the Stade de France is closed for preparatory work for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
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If the Top 14 brings together the best professional rugby union clubs, it is rugby sevens which has been on the program of the Olympic Games since 2016. The women’s and men’s competitions – each bringing together twelve teams – will be organized between the 24th and 30th. July at the Stade de France.
This format of seven players per team allowed rugby to make its comeback at the Olympic Games after 92 years of absence. A long ban resulting from an exclusion which was decided a hundred years ago, at the end of the Paris Games in 1924.
Olympic rugby’s meager success
Favorite team sport of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, rugby appeared on the Olympic program for the first time at the Paris Games in 1900, with a fifteen-a-side tournament, for men only. The oval ball continued to bounce back in the 1908 edition in London then that of 1920 in Antwerp, before its last Olympic XV match, on May 18, 1924 in Paris.
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That day, the final of the rugby tournament between the American team, then the defending champion, and the French XV was held at the Olympic stadium in Colombes, in the northwestern suburbs of the capital. On the field, the Americans dominated the game while the French team was reduced to thirteen, after two players went off injured. Result: the Americans won by a large margin, 17 to 3, beating the French.
The climate in the stands is noxious: the crowd whistles for the raising of the American flag, insults the referee and boos the American players. Fights broke out between French and American supporters, leaving several injured. Acts far removed from the three values of Olympism (excellence, respect, friendship) promoted by Baron de Coubertin.
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These excesses are not without consequences for the Olympic future of rugby. Here he is excluded from the Olympic Games for the next nine decades. The oval ball must wait until 2016 for a new test under the Olympic rings, in its sevens form.
However, this disastrous final is probably not the only event that led to rugby being sidelined from the Olympic programme. The Dispatch already evoked on May 15, 1924 the idea of “to simply remove this sport from the Olympic Games”while only two to three teams participated in rugby events during its four appearances between 1900 and 1924.
A new unfavorable calendar
Rugby also suffered the loss of its most ardent supporter following the resignation of Baron de Coubertin as IOC president at the Committee’s congress in Prague in 1925.
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This same congress also adopted a new calendar for the Games, setting the duration of the competition at fifteen days; until then, the Games could last from nine days (Athens 1896) to six months (London 1908) depending on the edition. This more compact calendar was unfavourable to the expanded rugby union matches, given the recovery time required for the players between two matches.
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The seven-player version is compatible with a condensed schedule. If the size of the field is the same in rugby sevens and rugby union, the playing time is adapted to the number of players on the pitch. A rugby sevens match lasts only 14 minutes (two periods of seven minutes each separated by a two-minute break), compared to 80 minutes in XV (twice 40 minutes with a five-minute break).
Sevens teams can thus face several opponents in the same day, allowing a real tournament to be played over a short period of time. Unlike rugby union, where the intensity and duration of a match prohibit this repetition of matches and stretch international competitions over more than a month.
