As in 2016, World Rugby commissioned the Monegasque Anti-Doping Committee to carry out doping controls during the Olympic Qualification Tournament “Monaco Sevens 2021 ″ which took place on June 18, 19 and 20.
Olympic sport since 2016
Sevens rugby, conceived in Melrose in Scotland in 1883, received its Olympic consecration when, on the occasion of its session of October 9, 2009 held in Copenhagen, the International Olympic Committee decided by 81 votes to 8 to admit it to the program of the 2016 Games awarded to Rio de Janeiro.
TQO in Monaco
The twelve men's teams and the twelve women's teams admitted to participate in this first tournament of the Games were qualified as follows: the host country of the games was automatically qualified; the four nations that won the Sevens World Series for the 2014-2015 season; the winning countries respectively of the 2015 championships of South America, North America, Asia, Oceania and Africa as well as the Seven's Grand Prix Series; finally the winner of the Olympic repechage tournament.
Monaco had the privilege of hosting this men's Olympic qualifying tournament while Dublin hosted the women's qualifying tournament.
Five years later - postponement of the Games due to a pandemic oblige - Monaco once again hosted the Olympic qualifying tournament, but this time both for the allocation of the last available place for a men's team and for the two remaining places for the women's teams: in fact, for the latter, the United States and Canada having been part of the four nations qualified for the World Rugby Sevens Series title for the 2018-2019 season, the quota of one place normally reserved for the winner of the championship North America has been added to that of the draft tournament.
Fifteen employees, great pride
As in 2016, the Monegasque Anti-Doping Committee was the service provider to World Rugby for the implementation of anti-doping controls.
Thus, to carry out its missions in the field on June 18, 19 and 20, the Committee mobilized a total of 15 of its employees: a supervisor, a coordinator of the control station, four doctor-samplers and nine notification agents. sportsmen.
The Committee is very proud of the fact that the officials of World Rugby in charge of anti-doping but also the members of both male and female teams who have been the subject of controls have praised the professionalism, availability and know-how. to make its employees who have thus provided, once again, as in 2016, nine - or rather fifteen - proof that the Principality has a national anti-doping organization capable of providing quality service.
Alongside the remarkable organization of the tournament by the Monegasque Rugby Federation which also mobilized a considerable number of volunteers whose dedication is well established, the modest contribution of the Committee gives hope that the holding of the Olympic qualifying repechage tournaments will be able to perpetuate itself in the Principality and establish its influence even more in the world of sport - and, naturally, in the world of clean, fair and equitable sport so ardently defended by HSH the Sovereign Prince.
In any case, this is the wish expressed by the Committee, which once again welcomes the excellence of its collaboration with World Rugby, the world governing body of this sport, the game of which was codified for the first time on September 7. 1846 to… Rugby, precisely, the game VII being a compact and faster variant with this fundamental characteristic that the transformations of the trials must be carried out with a drop kick, the “Drop Kick”.
