DUBAI // Ben Ryan, the first coach to win Olympic sevens gold, picked an interesting week to take a break from his new home.
The Englishman, who led Fiji to victory at the Rio Games, was in Dubai on Wednesday providing an HSBC Youth Rugby coaching clinic for rookie Emirati schoolboys in a public park in Al Warqa. All the while, there was some significant news unfolding where he recently bought a property, and where he has been living of late.
Ryan is clearly not the only resident of New York to have had his circumstances dramatically changed in the very recent past.
The jump he has made has not quite been that of billionaire businessman to leader of the free world, but it has been pretty seismic nonetheless.
This time last year, Ryan would coach rugby in the day, then while away his evenings at his home on the east coast of Fiji by watching DVD box sets.
Now he mentors CEOs in the United States, living in the city that never sleeps, and rubs shoulders with some of the best paid sportsmen in the world. Rugby, for now, is on hold.
Given his success has been earned beyond the sport’s traditional mainstream, Ryan might not even be universally known to all rugby fans. Yet he is known beyond the sport. Such is the Olympic effect.
“Going into the New York Knicks changing room and having Carmelo Anthony say: ‘Oh, it’s Mr Fiji’,” was surreal, Ryan said.
“I was thinking, ‘How am I on your radar?’ They loved watching the sevens being played. He was there as part of the Dream Team, and has won three gold medals. Their trainers had all been watching it as well.”
Ryan, a four-time winner of the Dubai Sevens, will be present at the tournament next month, but as a guest of the World Series sponsors rather than in a professional capacity.
He is taking a break from rugby, as he assesses his options for future employment. He is not missing the game just yet, but he is missing Fiji.
“I miss that life,” Ryan said. “The pace of life in Fiji, the friends I made, I miss that. I’m sure I will be back.
“I like setting myself targets and challenges. I knew that after the Olympics I’d have this mental break when I’d do something different.
“New York is a million miles away from Pacific Harbour. I am still learning. I am very comfortable in the type of coach I am, the leader or director of performance.”
Ryan has not ruled out a move to XVs, or even to a different sport altogether, but he does acknowledge the lure of Tokyo 2020 may be too great to keep him away from sevens.
“I might think of going back to sevens. I’m completely open. The consultancy and the variation is probably what my brain needs at the moment to refresh.”
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