While European teams are angling to make this year's FINA World League Super Finals, non-Europeans will face off in a six-day tournament in Lima, Peru, starting on Monday. Some South American nations are competing in the World League for the first time, showing how the World League is becoming more universal.
LIMA (Peru) — Non-European nations enter the FINA Water Polo World League cauldron with the men’s and women’s FINA Intercontinental Cup qualifiers being played here on Monday until Saturday.
Photos courtesy of Russell McKinnon
Six men’s and women's teams will contest the right to find the top four in each to join the top four teams from the European qualifiers for the Super Finals.
The men will progress to the July 23-29 Super Final in Strasbourg, France and the women’s Super Final date and venue are yet to be decided.
The last two Intercontinental Cups were to have been played in Indianapolis (USA) for the past two years but were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The previous event was staged in Perth, Australia, where the accompanying photographs were taken.
This is the first time World League matches have been played in South America and the fact that 15 teams have committed to the tournament shows the huge interest in the event.
The men's and women's competitions will be contested in two groups in the preliminaries, with the four semifinalist teams advancing to the Super Final.
The men’s and women's competition sees five nations from the Americas — Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia and USA — and Oceania representative Australia.
With the dearth of international competition during the pandemic and the year following an Olympic Games, the teams are likely to look much different from previous years and could throw up some interesting results.
The shock loss of the triple Olympic champion USA women to Hungary during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was evidence that some teams are fast catching the team that has won the Super Final an incredible 14 times, including the last seven straight.
Australia has the best record behind the USA with four silvers and six bronzes.
Brazil is the only South American women’s team to contest the Super Final, finishing eighth in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
In the men’s competition, USA has the highest pedigree with three silver medals, including one in Tibilisi, Georgia last year. It also has a bronze medal. Australia, who could not travel due to Covid last year, has three bronze medals, it's latest in 2019.