strangely titilating…
I have a new appreciation for this sport.
London 2012 Olympics: British women’s water polo team study martial arts to be fighting fit for Games
If the Spanish women’s water polo squad seem surprisingly watery-eyed at this summer’s Olympics, it is unlikely to have anything to do with chlorine in the London pool.
By Simon Hart
9:03AM BST 03 May 2012
In a pre-emptive strike against the ‘wedgies’ commonly delivered by female players – where an opponent’s swimming costume is yanked violently and painfully upwards — the Spanish have apparently taken to pulling up their own costumes before they set foot in the water.
“You get a lot of wedgies with cossies being pulled up your bottom,” explained Frankie Snell, who, as Britain’s last line of defence at centre-back, has been known to dabble in a few underhand tactics herself.
“A lot of girls pull their costumes up and give themselves wedgies just to stop somebody else coming along and doing it. The Spanish girls tend to do that.
“I’m sure everyone’s going to find it very entertaining seeing them walking down the poolside with their cossies right up their bottoms. I know that some of my friends who saw them play were very impressed with the Spanish girls and how they wore their costumes.”
Water polo has never been a sport for wimps. Indeed, what goes on under the water, away from the prying eyes of referees, is as much a part of the game as the action above it.
And very often the nefarious practices going on in the murky depths are not only illegal but wince-inducingly violent. In the men’s game, where there is not much costume to get hold of, there is only one thing left to grab.
“All the time there is holding and grabbing,” said Fran Leighton, who has captained the Great Britain team for nine years. “You’ve just got to remember: ‘Face of an angel out of the water and then who knows what your arms are doing under the water.’”
Team GB captain Fran Leighton
For the most part, injuries tend to be confined to scratches, bruises and friction burns from costumes being pulled and stretched — hence the Spanish wedgie tactic – though things took a nastier turn during a recent match between Britain and Australia when GB right-wing Alex Rutlidge suffered a broken rib when she was on the receiving end of an underwater kick from an opponent.
“The Australians are known for being the dirtiest,” Snell said. “We were recording the game and we’ve got it on film. You can see the girl pull Alex in towards her and then boot off her ribs. You saw Alex almost sink under the water.”
Hostilities with the Australians will resume tonight when Britain meet them in the opening round of the official Olympic test event at the Water Polo Arena in Stratford, where a crowd of 4,000 in the 5,000-seat temporary venue should provide some extra spice.
The United States and Hungary are also in action in the mini-Olympic dress rehearsal, which will give Britain’s women the chance to test themselves against some of the world’s top nations, and also some of the most physical.
To underline just how rough things can get, the British squad have been working with a martial arts expert since the end of last year to improve their combat skills.
“We do a lot of wrestling out of the pool,” Snell said. “We have a proper instructor and we have to do proper grappling and learn all the wrestling moves because a lot of it is about fighting.
“You can be lying with an opponent almost horizontal in the pool holding onto each other’s shoulders, so we practise a lot of fighting.
“We do it in these all-black skin-tight suits so we don’t burn our skin, so if anyone walked in and saw us rolling around on the floor they’d wonder what was going on. It’s really physical.”
Snell, who was born in New Zealand but has a UK passport through her English mother, needs all the fighting know-how she can get because her job as centre-back is to mark the opposing centre-forward, often the biggest and most physical player in the team. While not petite, Snell usually gives away a big size advantage.
“Obviously, there are some big girls I have to play against who can be at least double my size – big, strong girls, especially the Hungarians and the Australians,” the 25 year-old said.
“It’s an advantage for them when it comes to fighting but, when it comes to being quick and going on counter-attacks, it’s an advantage for me to be smaller and lighter because if I can get in front of them I just sprint off and get a counter-attack going. But something I personally have to work on is the fighting.”
If that means stretching the boundaries of legality to the limit, and sometimes beyond, so be it. Snell, who is the personification of charm out of the water, once broke an opponent’s nose in a match and laughs when asked if it was intentional.
“Um, maybe 50-50! You’re trying to protect the ball by swimming with high elbows and if somebody is coming in to try to steal the ball you do a sort of half-aggressive elbow in their direction. This time it just clipped the girl’s nose and broke it.”
Leighton believes the key is to push the laws to the edge without conceding a foul, which can lead to a powerplay for the opposing team or even dismissal for the most blatant act of violence, and not to allow yourself to shrink from the physicality of opponents.
“I think at first a lot of the girls thought ‘oh my goodness’,” she says. “I think now, we don’t get in there first but we know how to take it and give as good as we get.
“The last thing you want to be is an easy target so you have to start strongly and take no nonsense.”
Britain’s women certainly appear to be giving as good as they get if their results are anything to go by. While the men’s squad continue to struggle against the world’s top water polo nations, the women qualified for this year’s European Championships for the first time in 15 years and were far from humiliated in finishing seventh in Eindhoven in January.
“All of our games were competitive and hopefully in the next few months we can get to the stage where we can start turning defeats into wins,” Leighton said.
“Maybe with a home crowd behind us, that can swing things a little bit in our favour. If we have the best two weeks of our life, I think we can beat anyone.”
