ANCIENT ORIGINS

WOMEN DARE TO TREAD WATER IN A MAN'S WORLD

Water-polo players are some of the biggest, meanest and most muscle-bound athletes at the Games - and that's just the women. The fairer sex, though the term is indeed debatable in the tough world of water polo, make their Olympic debut in Sydney, with six teams competing for glory, as opposed to 12 teams among men.

Comparisons with football and rugby do little justice to water polo, a game in which swimmers must never touch the sides or bottom of the pool but stay afloat either treading water or swimming throughout the entire match. It is not uncommon for competitors to swim 5 kilometres in a match that consists of four seven-minute quarters but can last much longer because of stoppages. Beyond the need to have the stamina of a champion swimmer, players must then also have the power to endure the below-surface trickery and fouling that are part and parcel of the fight and possess skills of passing, dribbling and shooting.

The game's origins can be traced back to holiday camps in England in the 19th century, when resort owners used a form of waterpolo to attract attention and guests. It was not quite the structured affair we recognise today; among the many tricks that players used to get up to was to hide the ball in their trunks, disappear into the murky depths of pond, river or lake and emerge near the goal for a surprise attack. Fighting was common (and in some ways still is), with many a player emerging from underwater tussles in a semi-conscious state. So violent did the game become at one stage that it was banned from American universities.

Scotland introduced rules in the late 19th century that marked the start of the modern game, which quickly spread throughout the British Empire and continental Europe. By the turn of the century it had become popular in the United States and joined the Olympic family of sports at Paris in 1900.