There have not been many rugby sevens matches quite like the quarter-final between France and Argentina, have not, in all honesty, been many Olympic moments quite like it either. France won it 26-14, their last, match-winning, try, a spectacular solo tap-and-go scored by (who else but?) Antoine Dupont. But it was not the action that made the occasion, good as it was, but the atmosphere around it. There were 80,000 French fans in the Stade de France, and they made a racket that carried out of the ground and right around the city.
The poor old Argentinians were on the hook for the racist chants their football team aimed at the French players during the recent Copa América, and they were booed and hooted and jeered every time they touched the ball. Relations between the two countries have become so strained that Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has arranged to meet Emmanuel Macron in Paris this weekend in an effort to lessen the tensions between them.
