Germany and Sweden battle in the semifinals at Berlin 1936.
Handball was originally a tough sell to the Olympic movement; it was added as a concession to the German hosts in 1936, but didn't reappear until 1972. It might seem, then, that sporting folk in the early part of the 20th Century had little use for throwing balls at a goal.
But not so! A mere eight years after it was invented, a game the English initially called "aquatic handball" was added to the Olympic program. First held in 1900 at Paris, water polo would forever hold the distinction of being the first-ever team sport included at the Games. As is often the case when a country is teaching a game of its own to the world, Great Britain swept through the three-game tournament -- scoring 29 goals to their opponents' three.
Despite many modern texts omitting the 1904 version, water polo was indeed part of the St. Louis Games, albeit with a deflated ball. According to Bill Mallon's fine chronicle of those chaotic Olympics, a man-made lake was built at the World's Fair, and three American teams entered the event. A German team showed up, but because the players were not part of the same club back home, the organizers did not allow them to participate (a bizarre ruling that has resulted in historians' refusal to consider the tournament as Olympic). Four of the American water polo players from 1904 died of typhus within a year, in large part because cattle from the Fair's agricultural exhibits had wandered into the lake.
Water polo has been an Olympic stalwart since. The modern version of the sport, played with a fully inflated ball and in cow-free swimming pools, takes place in a pool 33 yards long by 22 yards wide and six feet deep. Some Olympic events have been held at the same water as swimming and diving, but in recent years the tournaments have been held in their own special pool for ease-of-scheduling purposes.
Games are played in four eight-minute periods. There are seven players a side, one side in white swim caps and the other in blue. Goalies wear red, and the six offensive layers move the ball forward with passes, one-handed carrying and "dribbling" -- pushing the ball forward with the head or arms. There's a 35-second shot clock, and if the offense doesn't shoot within that time, the other teams gains possession.
Water polo is filled with don't-do's.
Over the years, water polo has developed a long, sliding scale of discipline. Ordinary fouls result in a forced turnover. Major "exclusion" fouls such as clubbing, holding and sinking an opponent's head underwater result in a 20-second power play. The power play is over if the man-up team scores or the man-down team regains possession. "Brutality" fouls such as kicking result in a four-minute break for the offender. "Misconduct" fouls are those that show disrespect to the game, result in a penalty shot, and are called "rolls" because of the official's fist-over-fist gesture. Penalty shots are also awarded at the two-meter line if a major foul is committed by a defender within five meters of the goal.
Water Polo Fun Facts:
- In November of 1956, 200,000 Soviet soldiers invaded Hungary to quash a revolt. Within a month, the U.S.S.R. and Hungary met in the pool, and the result was bloody bedlam. Officials and police broke up a major brawl and awarded Hungary with a win, as they were up 4-0 at the time. One wonders if this would have happened if this would have happened if those Summer Games weren't in Melbourne, Australia, and had been held months earlier, during what the Northern Hemisphere calls summer.
- Hungary has dominated the men's tournaments this century, winning gold in 2000 and 2004. At Athens, the Hungarians became the first water polo team to go through the tournament unbeaten and untied since the Soviets crushed a depleted field in 1980.
But early in the second half of the gold medal match with Serbia and Montenegro, Hungary looked flat and beatable, down 7-5 to the upstart Serbs. What followed was one of the more staggering displays of defense in Olympic water polo history. Note: the announcer is Hungarian.
- Women's water polo was added to the Olympic menu in time for Sydney 2000, and the results have run counter to the traditional Eastern European power structure. The Australian team (which needs a nickname) won the first-ever gold in its own pool, and the Italian women's national team eked past an even field to record a 10-9 win over host Greece in the Athens 2004 event.
In 2008:
The Ying Tung Pool will be the venue for water polo next month. The dates will be August 10-24 (Days 2-16). The men's and women's events will take place concurrently; the women's gold medal game is August 21 (Day 13), and the men's final occurs on the same day as the Closing Ceremony.
The men's tournament will include 12 teams in two groups. Australia, Canada, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro and Spain are in Group A. Group B is made up of China, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Serbia and the United States. Each team plays every other pool member once. The second and third-place teams will play an opposite-group quarterfinal round, so formerly conjoined Serbia and Montenegro might end up playing each other. The group leaders await in the semis, then on to gold.
In the third Olympic women's tournament, eight teams will splash for gold. Host China, Italy, Russia and the United States are Group A, and Group B contains Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands and Australia. The bottom four teams after round-robin play will play in classification matches, then the final rounds will play out in similar fashion to the men's event.
All-Time Medal Standings:
| Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 8 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 8 |
 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 7 |
 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 6 |
 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 7 |
 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
(Photo via 1936 Official Report)
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