Boys and their Balls - Part 21

 Water Polo

The July 1996 LIFE magazine cover featured a photo by Joe McNally of four members of the U.S. Olympic water polo team (from left: Rick McNair, Alex Rousseau, Chris Humbert, Chris Duplanty), under the title "Naked power."

More naked power.  This is a calendar photo of water polo players in the Queer Utah Athletic Club (QUAC).  The guy lying down at left is not wearing his cap properly, although it looks well-filled.

These members of the West Hollywood water polo team, photographed by Peter Bohler, are all wearing proper caps.  The rules specify that opposing teams must wear different color caps, and the goalies wear a third color (usually red) to identify them.  

It's a surprisingly brutal game.  Pushing, hitting, kicking another player, or grabbing his swimsuit are prohibited fouls, but a lot goes on underwater that the referee doesn't see.  Players wear tiny swimsuits that fit very tightly to make it harder for competitors to grab them.

The caps have built-in ear protectors.

Soccer balls were used in the early days of water polo, but they absorbed water and got too heavy.  Modern water polo balls are waterproof.

I found this photo labeled as a water polo player, but I didn't know if he was or not, since he wasn't wearing a cap.

It turned out to be an altered fake version of this photo of Hungarian water polo player Tamas Kasas.  He is an Olympic gold medal winner and one of the best water polo players in the world, but he wasn't naked.

Ironically, although the fake photo was very well done, it was superfluous in a way.  His private parts were already out on the Internet.  A quick search revealed this photo of Kasas in which his tiny swimsuit fails to cover his bulge.

Here are some friends playing naked water polo.  You can tell it's not a regulation game because (1) they're not wearing caps, (2) there are no goals at the ends of the pool, and (3) they're standing at the shallow end (real water polo is played in a deep pool that has no shallow end).  But they're having fun.

We end today with a clip from a 2006 Hungarian movie called Children of Glory. You can see it better if you view it fullscreen.

The players aren't naked, but it's worth watching. The film recreates a dramatic water polo game in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, between Hungary (wearing black caps) and Russia (wearing white caps). The 1956 Hungarian revolution against Communist rule had just been brutally crushed by Russia. In the pool, tensions were high. From the beginning, kicks and punches were exchanged in the water. As the game neared the end, Hungary was leading 4-0. Two of the goals were by 21-year-old Hungarian player Ervin Zádor.

With one minute left, Russian player Valentin Prokopov punched Zádor in the face, causing a bleeding gash. Angry spectators jumped over the barrier and mobbed the Russian team. The referees stopped the match and declared Hungary the winner. A famous photo shows Zádor with blood streaming down from his face, recreated at the end of this clip. The event became known as the "blood in the water match."

Of the 83 Hungarian athletes at the 1956 Olympics, only 38 returned to Hungary. The rest, including Ervin Zádor, defected to the West. In California, struggling to learn English, Zádor took a series of low-paying jobs until a group of Bay Area parents, hearing that he had been an Olympian, hired him as a swim coach for their children. One of his pupils was Mark Spitz, who went on to win 9 Olympic gold medals.