Rugby Canada Bidding to Host Olympic Qualifier Event in Langford in August
Rugby Canada did a presentation at Langford Council on Monday where they announced they will be bidding to host the Olympic qualifying event for Paris 2024 in Langford.
If you check Wiki however they already have the 2023 RAN 7s tournament pencilled in for August 19-20 in Langford as part of the Paris 2024 qualifying process.
Canada will have to go through the qualifying tournament for both men and women this Olympics as neither are likely to finish in the top 4 in the World Rugby 7s series.
Rugby Canada is bidding to host the Olympics qualifier sevens event in Langford in August 2023.
The event would see 12 teams take to the field at Starlight Stadium later this year, as they bid to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The announcement was part of a presentation given to Langford city council during Mondays (March 6) meeting, during which Nathan Bombrys, chief executive officer at Rugby Canada, reaffirmed the organizations commitment to working with the city.
Rugby Canada moved their headquarters to Langford in 2013 and established its national training centre in the city in 2018. Since then, a number of development programs have been moved or established out of the centre.
But this year, the womens sevens event was moved to Vancouver to be hosted on the same weekend as the mens event, after a request from the sports governing body World Rugby, according to former interim CEO Jamie Levchuk.
An independent review of Rugby Canadas high-performance programs released in March 2022 cited problems some athletes had with Rugby Canada basing its operations and athletes in Langford on Vancouver Island.
Langford is not viewed as a positive place to live with it being framed as expensive and isolated, it says.
The teams themselves have not hit the heights of previous years.
The womens team finished sixth in the Vancouver Sevens while the mens team finished 15th. The men came into the tournament sitting 14th in the World Rugby Sevens Series standings and are fighting to avoid relegation, with the number of mens core teams for the 2024 season set to be cut from 16 to 12, to match the womens side and the Olympic competition structure.
The men needed to reach the quarterfinals of the next four tournaments while managing wins when playing the teams ahead of them to gain enough points to climb into 11th place or better and avoid playing in a relegation playoff.
The top four mens and womens teams at the end of the season will qualify automatically for the 2024 Paris Olympics.