Glory be, the Games are going to have to go some to top their start at the Stade de France on Saturday night. France won their first gold medal of these Olympics in the most incredible style, with a ring-a-ding, rope-a-dope 28-7 victory in the men’s rugby sevens final against the two-time Olympic champions Fiji. It wasn’t only orchestrated by Antoine Dupont, it was conceived, composed and performed by him too. Dupont, the face of the Games, met the moment in a way few athletes labouring under the heavy weight of national expectation, ever do.
In the space of seven minutes, the scrum-half made one try and scored two more. Whatever else happens in the next fortnight, his play in those moments will be part of the highlight reel of the Games. He did it all in front of a capacity crowd, the largest ever assembled for a game of sevens. Emmanuel Macron was there among the thousands, the president beaming down from the balcony while everyone belted out La Marseillaise. You could just about catch the golden tint of all that reflected glory on his brilliant white teeth.
No one really expected this except, perhaps, Dupont himself. Four years ago France were so bad they didn’t qualify. Fiji may be a much smaller country but they won gold in 2016, did it again in 2020 and were unbeaten in 17 games of Olympic competition. In all that time, no one had come within four points of beating them. France lost to them by seven only two days ago. And halfway through the match it looked as though they were going to go down to them again, just like Great Britain and New Zealand had in finals before this one.
They were 7-0 down after 90 seconds, after they were slashed apart by Selesitino Ravutaumada, who burst through Paulin Riva’s tackle and punched past Stephan Parez-Edo Martin. The ball flickered on once, twice, more, and before anyone knew it Joseva Talacolo had scored.
France did pull one back against the run of play when Andy Timo wriggled through a tackle and put away Jefferson-Lee Joseph with an offload. But they were scrabbling to stay in the game, and the atmosphere around the ground was awkward and uneasy.
And then Dupont came on. Great man theory holds that history can be explained by the influence of our heroes, and France sure had one of those to help them make this little bit of it. He was waiting right there in the backfield after half-time. The ball broke loose to him from the restart, and with his first touch he picked it up and set off down the wing. You could almost sense his mind slowing down as his legs sped up and he made the minute calculations about what to do next as he ran breakneck into the Fiji half, 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m, on towards the corner.
It felt as if he was hauling all of France along with him.
Dupont blew by the great Jerry Tuwai, who was a member of both those gold-medal teams, and pressed on. He flicked an overhead pass inside to Aaron Grandidier Nkanang just as the cover closed in and he was bundled into touch. Grandider made it 14-7 and all of a sudden the France team seemed to shed the inhibitions that had affected them in the first half. They were irresistible, and everywhere. Fiji, whose coach had promised before the match that they would leave their opponents “chasing shadows” were powerless to do anything about it.
France flickered to and fro around them, darting, dashing, cutting, thrusting. Dupont scored the third try with a tap-and-go from close range and a fourth off the back of a rolling maul just to make sure. By then it was bedlam in the stadium. It is supposed to be dry for the duration of the Olympics, but you would never have guessed the crowd were sober. The place was shaking so hard while the crowd bounced around it felt as if the stands were about to come tumbling down.
Rugby is supposed to be the team game and there’s no doubt that part of the reason Dupont’s great experiment in moving across from the 15-man version worked so well was because he brought so little of his ego along with him when he parachuted into the squad at the start of the year.
“He adapted to our principles of play,” said Riva afterwards. “He put everything else to one side for the team.” After it was all over, he was out there in the huddle, another of the boys, while they showed off their dance moves in the middle of the pitch.
But still, it has seldom felt so much like a solo sport as it did on Saturday night. Dupont took this game and against the odds turned it the way he wanted it to go. He did something only the very best athletes are able to do, and he will be rewarded for it with his gold medal and a fame well beyond anything anyone in his sport has achieved before.
