‘It takes time’: The patient progress behind Argentina’s SVNS success

Santiago Gómez Cora is a patient man. Whilst he has now changed his reading habits, he has read a lot about neuroscience, following his desperate need to understand the human brain and the way people behave.

“I like the Japanese bamboo analogy, which is perfect for this team and shows that with work things happen,” he once explained analysing the ‘sudden’ success of his team.

“You plant the seed, fertilize it, water it every day, move the earth and for seven years, nothing really happens. And suddenly, within six weeks, it will grow 30 metres.”

“It takes time but when it starts to grow, it is with very solid roots.”

In explaining this, Gómez Cora, a record-breaking player when the HSBC SVNS was in its infancy – scoring 230 series’ tries between 2002 and 2009 – and a Puma 7s coach since 2013, has certainly been patient.

“At times there is no tolerance for processes.” He has managed to change that trend.

This Argentina Sevens team that is challenging for the double – winning the HSBC SVNS and the SVNS Championship – broke every forecast winning bronze in Tokyo 2020 (played in 2021) at about the time the so-called bamboo was already growing solidly.

They have since become probably the hardest team in the circuit, winning the last two series, and now aiming for the win in Carson that will make them the undoubted best.

“Winning in Los Angeles would be good but what we are trying to do is to be a world power, to have our fans excited about the team. If we win, so much better. It is always about 14 minutes and what can happen and how you handle it. If we win, we celebrate; if we don’t, nothing changes as we still have to work hard for the next tournament.”

“We’ve now been at the top for four or five years, which makes it very complex. Teams that used to focus elsewhere now study us, which makes us work harder to come up with new options.”

Last year, after winning the Series in Singapore, a French team with Antoine Dupont beat them in the final of the World Championship decider in Madrid. A few weeks later the same opposition, playing at home in Paris, beat them in the quarterfinals in the Olympic Games. Two very painful losses.

“We never stop wanting to be the best in every tournament. Failure for us would be not trying.”

“Sometimes we are very hard on ourselves; we have to prove ourselves in every game,” said Gómez Cora.

This ethos is imbued in a team that has recovered Lautaro Bazán Vélez, scrumhalf in that Olympic-medal winning side. Having since played for Los Pumas, including in France 2023, he decided to break his XVs contract in Italy and return to the sevens fold.

In strengthening those roots, the goal for 2025 was to introduce players into the system whilst keeping of the backbone at full operation.

“Bauti is not a new player, but we had to see him. He was close to making it back for the previous tour but was not yet there. Now, he’s earned his place,” explains Gómez Cora.

The return of Bazán Vélez adds a wealth of experience to a team that is brimming with confidence.

“It was a hard comeback,” said Bazán Vélez. “I had to drop three kgs in a month and a half, readapt the body to the sevens game, work on skills that I wasn’t using in XVs. I am still in the process of reacquainting myself with sevens, the intensity is different and this team flies.”

His inclusion is part of Gómez Cora’s masterplan. “I liked how we played this year; we played better than last year, we were more balanced, we had more options,” says the coach.

In saying so, he has new weapons under his sleeve. “We need to keep changing.”

“In Madrid, last year, we lost the element of surprise.”

In that constant need to be better, concludes who should be a Hall of Famer at some stage “we know we have to improve. We plan different scenarios to win the matches.”

Win each game and the team will win the tournament, a bit like the bamboo. Winning would ratify how positive the road taken is.

And for Gomez Cora it will be a second win in the same venue, having been a player when Los Pumas 7s won their first ever tournament, back in 2004, when the bamboo wasn’t even planted.

What is Gómez Cora reading nowadays? “I was told that I need to read more novels and biographies, as I need to relax my mind when I read…”

In his Kindle, he has the recommendation of this writer: “I had to survive”, by Roberto Canessa and Pablo Vierci, the autobiography of one of the survivors of the Andes’ plane crash in 1972.

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Men’s pools for SVNS Series World Championship

Pool A: Argentina, South Africa, France, Great Britain

Pool B: Fiji, Spain, Australia, New Zealand

Women’s pools for SVNS Series World Championship

Pool A: New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Great Britain

Pool B: Australia, France, USA, Fiji