Tristan Leyds was visibly emotional after being named the world's best sevens player on Sunday, having already been part of the Blitzboks squad that retained both the HSBC SVNS World Championship and the SVNS Series title on Saturday in what was a clean sweep of the circuit's top honours.
Blitzboks head coach Philip Snyman broke the news of the individual award to Leyds privately on Saturday, before the official announcement on Sunday. The occasion was heightened by the presence of Leyds' wife, parents, and his brother Dillyn — himself a two-time Champions Cup winner with La Rochelle and Player of the Final in one of those campaigns — in the crowd.
"Dillyn always calls me 'the better Leyds' on his social media posts and that means a lot," Leyds said. "He is a Springbok, he won the Champions Cup twice and was named Player of the Final, so yes, maybe I did step a bit out of his shadow by winning Player of the Year."
Leyds, who joined the Blitzboks three years ago, credited Snyman for the individual ambition that drove his season. At the start of the campaign he told Snyman he wanted to be the best number ten on the circuit, only for the coach to challenge him to aim for the best player in the world outright.
Among the season's landmarks Leyds highlighted were winning in Hong Kong for the first time in franchise history and claiming back-to-back titles in Cape Town — both firsts for the programme. "One of the things you want to try and do is to set new standards and with this team, the standard is already so high," he said.
Leyds, who was part of the bronze-medal squad at the Paris Olympics, identified the 2028 Los Angeles Games as the next frontier, saying the experience in Paris showed him how significant a gold medal could be for the group.