LONG READ Rikki Swannell: 'It was the most visceral reaction I’ve ever seen or heard in sport.'

In 20 years of working as a sports reporter and commentator I’d never heard anything like it. Three years on and it’s a sound that still rings in my ears.

Gaston Revol had been sent off in Argentina’s Tokyo Olympic quarter-final against South Africa, red carded for a clothesline tackle on Selvyn Davids. He watched the remainder of the match from the sidelines, which, as it happened was about five metres from where I was standing in the media mixed zone, working as a reporter for New Zealand television.

Watching through his hands and tear-filled eyes, Revol was a wreck as his team pulled off one of their great victories, coming from behind with six players to beat South Africa and reach the medal rounds. It was at the final whistle that his full release of emotions came, collapsing to his knees and crying with what sounded like a guttural noise, a full grief response.

It was the most visceral reaction I’ve ever seen or heard in sport.

The Los Pumas legend would play no further part in the tournament but his team would go on to create history by winning the bronze medal, and Revol’s reaction would come to be an enduring memory of an Olympic Games like no other.

As we head towards the Paris Olympics and Rugby Sevens’ third appearance at the sporting extravaganza, I’m reminded of something the former All Blacks coach Graham Henry said when he joined the Black Ferns set-up a couple of years ago. “World Cups do strange things to people”, Henry repeated a few times with a trademark glint in his eye during the 2022 women’s World Cup.

In Rio, or the “Matthew McConaughey Games” there was not only an element of the unknown but also a perhaps a sense that some sectors of the rugby world just didn’t quite get what a big deal the Olympics are.

The same could be said for Olympic Games and we only need to look back at the two previous iterations to find proof – just ask the New Zealand men in 2016 or the Australian women in 2021 what the cauldron of the Olympics can do. Many athletes thrive in that spotlight and relish the big occasion, others find it too much. Experience counts for plenty and history has shown that teams or individuals can fly under the radar in the lead up and then rise to the occasion when it counts; Japan 2016 and Fijiana 2020 spring immediately to mind.

In Rio, or the “Matthew McConaughey Games” there was not only an element of the unknown but also a perhaps a sense that some sectors of the rugby world just didn’t quite get what a big deal the Olympics are.

As a radio reporter covering multiple sports a day and not yet commentating on the World Series, I dipped in and out of sevens throughout the six days, but I remember a feeling that New Zealand Rugby (the powers that be, not the players) just didn’t fully grasp the significance of the moment and hadn’t given the teams everything they’d needed to become Olympic champions.

Five years on in Tokyo reactions like that of Revol were far from a rarity.

The covid lockdowns and the one-year delay took a huge toll on everyone and evidence of that was on display across the Japanese capital. At every event I attended emotions ran high and often spilled over as tension, stress, relief and yes, finally some joy, were all released and expressed.

I still recall seeing my now friend and colleague Abby Gustaitis, then the USA captain, uncontrollably sobbing after they were stunned in the quarter-finals.

I still recall seeing my now friend and colleague Abby Gustaitis, then the USA captain, uncontrollably sobbing after they were stunned in the quarter-finals and the empty stares of the Canadian women whose programme had fallen apart sometime during the pandemic. New Zealand’s stoic captain Scott Curry had to walk away from our interview to gather himself as he was so overcome following the gold medal match where they’d been beaten by Fiji.

As one of few people allowed at the event, it was at times gut wrenching to witness but to me that release of emotion was a good thing, almost an expression of the pain the entire world was feeling and through the winners we could experience some vicarious joy. Perhaps too it showed that the emotional wellbeing of athletes should never be secondary to the winning or losing of medals.

So now to Paris.

With six sold out days ahead of us at the Stade de France, the third iteration of Rugby Sevens at the Olympics could take the game to a new level and show the rest of the world (and indeed parts of the rugby community), what we already know about sevens players – fit, fast, tough, skillful, personable entertainers.

When asked what the Games are like, I often make the absolute worst analogy…the Olympics is sport on steroids (I know, sorry). I mean this in the way that everything is supercharged – the venues, the glitz, the intensity, the scrutiny, the level of performance, the resources and money thrown at it, the powerbroking… I mean Matthew McConaughey seriously did show up in Rio. Be it a good or bad thing, the size and scale is simply bigger than anything else I’ve encountered in the sporting world.

Paris is being billed as rugby’s coming out party. Sevens as a whole and the athletes who play it are, for the first time, about to experience the full blast of what the Olympics are truly like.