For 92 years, the United States has been the reigning Olympic rugby champion — a feat that gets a little less impressive when you find out rugby has been discontinued from the Olympics since 1924.
At the Paris Games that year, France was considered to be due a rugby win, and the U.S. was prepared to give it to them. "We were told to go to Paris and take our beatings like gentlemen," said Norman Cleaveland, a player on the American team. Instead, the inexperienced and recently seasick Americans somehow pulled a 17-3 win, after which rugby was canceled for nearly a century.
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