Karien's Rio 2016 diary: Historic women's rugby sevens winds up

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  • Winding up: Womens rugby sevens nears end

    Four teams have made it this far, and whatever happens on Monday, history will be made when the first ever women’s rugby sevens Olympic champions will be crowned.

    Rugby has made its return to the Olympics after a 92-year absence. But there were certainly no women tackling their way to gold back in 1924.

    As predicted Australia, Canada, Great Britain and New Zealand have safely negotiated their way through the first two days of competition in Rio to book their semi-final spots.

    Australia will face Canada and Great Britain will play New Zealand to determine who will face off in the final later in the day on Monday.

    After their 24-0 victory over Spain in the quarter-final, Australian coach Tim Walsh said: “It’s almost a monkey off the back. In any tournament the quarterfinal’s always the big one, but now we’re playing for a medal. And we’re not happy with a bronze or silver. We want gold. We’ve created the opportunity for it, so now it’s up to us to take it.”

    Meanwhile, Canada’s Jennifer Kish reckoned: “Australia is a really tough team. We know what to expect. We know that if we make any mistakes they will capitalise on them.

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    “They are world class, but so are we. If they make mistakes, we will capitalise on that. So it’s going to be very much a chess match.”

    New Zealand emerged as the winners of the last Rugby World Cup Sevens tournament, held in 2013 while Australia were victors of the edition before that in 2009.

    Some fun facts about the Australian women’s sevens team that their conditioning coach Craig Twentyman told rio2016.olympics.com:

    The fastest athletes in the women’s programme can hit speeds of 9.2 metres per second, or just over 33km/h, and can cover 10 metres from a standing start in 1.6 seconds and 20 metres in 2.85 seconds.

    The strongest athletes in the programme can squat over two times their body weight, deadlift over 2.5 their body weight, bench press 1.3 times their body weight and chin-up with over 40kg added.

    The best vertical jump in the group is 70cm from a standing start.

    The fittest runners can complete 1600 metres in six minutes.

    In an average game of 14 minutes athletes can cover 1600 metres and in a 20 minute final they may cover 2400 metres.

    In a tournament the most involved athletes will cover 10km.

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