Hong Kong to host Asian Olympic qualifiers

By Shamseer Jaleel

Rugby Sevens qualifiers for next year’s Rio Olympics will take place on 7 and 8 November in Hong Kong, with 12 men’s and eight women’s teams confirming their participation. 

The men’s tournament will take place only in Hong Kong, with the winner qualifying for Rio, while the women’s competition will see a second leg being played in Tokyo, Japan. Sri Lanka will field a men’s and women’s team for the event in Hong Kong. This will be the final Sevens tournament for the year.

The competition will be the sole qualification event for the region’s top men’s teams for the 2016 Olympics, where rugby Sevens will be making its debut. A total of 24 teams (12 men’s and 12 women’s teams) will qualify for the Olympics through a number of regional competitions.

The top four teams from the HSBC Sevens World Series (men’s competition) and the World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series (women’s competition) have already booked their places in Rio next year.

These teams are Fiji, South Africa, New Zealand and England in the men’s competition and New Zealand, Canada, Australia and England in in the women’s competition. The Brazilian men’s and women’s Sevens teams automatically qualified for the Olympics since they are the games’ hosts.

Regional qualifiers for Asia and Africa will each send through a men’s and women’s team to Brazil.

France, USA and Argentina have qualified from their regional competitions for the men while France, USA and Colombia have qualified from the women’s regional competitions, bringing the total number of qualifying teams in their respective tournaments to eight out of 12.

With regional competitions still to come in Oceania, Africa and Asia, by the end of November, 11 teams would have qualified across both the men’s and women’s divisions.

The last available spot for the men and women will be decided through a 16-team cross-continental repechage tournament where the best nations which have still not qualified will play against the men’s and women’s champions to secure their ticket to Rio. This tournament will be played by end of June 2016. Asia will have three places in this competition.