Throughout the rounds the Pacific islanders got better and better, saving their best rugby until the final, when they showed just how good they are, sweeping aside a Great Britain side that had gone unbeaten throughout the competition.
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“When these guys are on fire, it’s very hard to combat”, GB captain Tom Mitchell said. “I want to relax with the Fiji players, then take in some BMX, watch my friend Jack Greening in the 400m hurdles and Greg Rutherford in the long jump because he has got red hair like me”.
Meanwhile, on the field in Rio, Fiji’s rugby players were moved by their win.
The whistleblower had a feeling in the changing room that his team was up for the Olympic final, but even he was amazed at how well they executed the game plan: Contesting kickoffs, staying on their feet in tackles and offloading. It may have been seven years in the making from inclusion on the Olympic programme, but the wait was worth every second and how the fans loved it. They have made history over six compelling days of sevens.
“The boys are front page, back page news, 6 o’clock news, you come out of the airport there’s a 20-foot billboard of them and that continues all the way through (the country)”. The South Africans were on the medal podium.
“Never before has the Fijian spirit soared so high as it does today”, he added.
It’s been a fabulous debut for Sevens at the Olympics and it’s sure to be a love affair that will endure.
Gillies Kaka had replied for New Zealand off a chip-and-chase while his team mate Rieko Ioane was in the sin-bin, though, and the All Blacks forced Fiji to cling on desperately at the end to book a semi-final against Japan. There was excitement as New Zealand’s quarter-final fate hinged on the result of Fiji v USA.
The match was played at 10 a.m. local time and the nation of around 900,000 mostly stopped as fans gathered around television sets.
Fiji stood triumphantly arm in arm after their win at Deodoro Stadium, singing to celebrate their victory.
Fiji crushed Britain in the final to claim a first-ever Olympic medal for the Pacific island nation, but the Japanese players were proud to take their gold-medal bid into the final day after numerous sport’s big guns had fallen by the wayside. This was Fiji’s first ever gold medal and first ever medal in the Olympics.
Social media was awash with expressions of joy and congratulations and for a time Fiji was the No. 1-trending search on Google.
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“I came to Fiji and just got back to basics again and stripped away all the other stuff that sometimes comes with these programmes – too many people, too many layers”.
