Men's and Women's Rugby Sevens Officially Added for Rio 2016 Summer Olympics

The IOC conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 10 October 2009 decided to add rugby and golf to the schedule for Rio 2016 Summer Olympics (Brazil) and Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics (Japan) as an official sport.
The world rugby community has actively called on the IOC for the concept “to make rugby an official Olympic sport”. This “rugby” means rugby sevens. Rugby sevens allows many nations to participate in the Olympic Games and to hold tournaments and championships. An assignment of the IRB to disseminate and develop rugby across the world has now been achieved when rugby sevens became an official Olympic sport.
Addition of rugby sevens to the Olympic Games indicates that Japan has to form the Japan national rugby sevens team as an urgent task.
The team director of the Japan National Women's Rugby Union Team, Noriko Kishida, showed her strong motivation, saying: “Addition of rugby sevens to the Olympic Games surely gives us great expectations. We will try to take advantage of this opportunity to increase public recognition of women's rugby with the aim to expand the base of this sport. We have conducted drafts to select young players. But while focusing on seeking out new talent, for example, fast runners, we also want to take more appealing measures such as increasing opportunities for women rugby players to play in front of spectators.” She is also not very optimistic when it comes to Japan's position in Asia as they compete with strong nations, China, Kazakhstan, and Thailand.