By Nick Said
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - The United States women’s water polo team are targeting an unprecedented fourth Olympic Games gold medal in a row in Paris, but with a new-look squad and in arguably the toughest field yet assembled, their dominance in the pool will be tested.
Women’s water polo has been part of the Olympic programme since 2000 with Australia, Italy and the Netherlands winning gold in the first three competitions.
But since London 2012, the United States have stood on top of the podium, and in all three instances have been spurred to victory by current captain Maggie Steffens.
She is the all-time record goal-scorer at the Olympics with 56 in 19 matches, and will add to that tally in Paris, but says the path to success this time round is full of obstacles.
"Each Olympics has its own identity, its own storyline," Steffens told Reuters. "This USA women's water polo team have never been to an Olympics together. Maybe some players have, but this is a new journey for this group.
"Your role changes, you as a person and an athlete change and mature (between Olympics), and so does the game itself."
Steffens believes the key to their recent success has been the culture within the U.S. women's water polo programme.
"That started way before I joined the team (in 2009), from before women's water polo was even in the Olympics. A culture of hard work, of ‘team first’, that's probably one of the most important things to our programme."
If Steffens is to collect a fourth gold, she insists this may be the toughest of the lot to win.
"It has gotten really competitive. All 10 teams are contenders. If you look at our bracket, we are playing Greece, Spain, Italy and France. That could easily be the top four right there. We must treat every game like a gold medal match."
Serbia have won the previous two gold medals in the men's competition, but have seen a downturn in fortunes in recent times.
They have a new coach in Uros Stevanovic, who was assistant at the Tokyo games, and finished ninth and seventh in the 2022 and 2024 European Championships respectively.
"A lot of players no longer agreed to participate in the national team after the Olympics in Tokyo," Stevanovic told World Aquatics.
"In Serbia everybody expects the past great results to be continued. It is very hard at the moment to live up to this expectation. I cannot say it's impossible, but it's very tough."
(Reporting by Nick Said; Editing by Toby Davis)