Among sports in which striking the opponent is illegal, water polo surely has to be the roughest. Football could be close, but at least the violence in it occurs mostly to dispossess the opponent of the ball. Off-ball fouls, though not rare, are extremely visible. Rough tackles invite penalty cards, the worst acts of violence end in send-offs.
But in water polo, attempt at murder is merely frowned upon, the offender is punished by being sent to a corner of the pool. In the fight for the ball, the surf that covers the area of action aids the malefactors.
In the match between Germany and Greece today, I counted at least a dozen actions which could be certified homicidal, but judging by the punishment they elicited, they seemed to be the norm.
Greece No. 11 Antonios Vlontakis and German No 10 Moritz Oeler spent most of the match in each other's arms, but it was not love. They twisted each others' arms, tried to hinder the other with a strong bear-hug, or simply tried to strangle him by getting a death-lock around his neck-- that's how it seemed, at least.
There are underwater cameras, but the two referees walking the poolside rely on naked eye.
In the game itself, you would not expect very high scores -- the liquid battlefield discourages human navigation, the game is exhausting, the goal is tiny. Scoring is not easy-- the players keep themselves afloat with one hand and shoot with the other. Thus the right-handers are on the left flank, left-handers on the right. They swivel their shooting arm side to side, attempting a feint that could beat the upraised arm of the goalkeeper or any defender on the way. With one arm, they have to create angles, horizontal and vertical, to propel the ball into the goal. Yet, goals are scored in high numbers-- 22 in the match between Germany and Greece.
The next match also had significance beyond the pool: Montenegro are at their first Olympics after they were recreated-- not "created", as a Montenegrin journalist pointedly corrected me.
The red-shirted Montenegrin fans had brought a flag larger than an average living room. The Hungarians, in white, had one the size of a dining table. They were equal in lung power, though the reds made greater noise by beating batons they carried. The two groups were side by side, though there was no violence.
In the pool, there existed every such possibility: one of the Montenegrin players, PredrasJokic, already sported a black eye, a mark from a past fight.
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No wonder one of the worst incidents of violence in the history of Olympics sports occurred in the swimming pool at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, in a match between Hungary and the USSR. The water turned crimson with the blood as,since it was the year the Russians occupied Hungary, the match gained significant political overtones.
In Beijing, at the most political Olympic Games in a long time, the matches featured only routine violence.
