About British Water Polo
British Water Polo is one of the five World Class programmes of the national governing body of British Swimming. We focus on selecting the Great Britain national teams to train in a high performance environment in Manchester for major competitions.
British Water Polo’s aim is excellence at an elite level. Our primary commitment is Olympic success at the London 2012 Olympics where we are entered by right as the host nation in the men’s event with 12 teams and in the women’s event with eight teams selected based on performance and continental representation.
While Great Britain has a great tradition in Water Polo having been credited with inventing the game and having won four medals in consecutive Olympics we have not been in a position to compete at Olympic level since 1956.
With UK Sport’s first ever injection of money into Water Polo in 2006, the sport was given the opportunity to rapidly develop an elite culture, cultivating not only a centralised, elite high performance centre for the senior squads capable of competing on the world stage, but a platform for the age group programmes to develop through.
British Water Polo has excelled in raising the sport from an amateur level to a full-time professional sport within the country, hosting 48 athletes in the high performance centre in Manchester. A high performance environment has been created which has changed the landscape of British Water Polo, so that other European and world countries now recognise us as a true contender to achieve success in 2012.
The junior and senior squads have thrived in this centralised environment and excelled in their performance targets, with the senior women emerging ninth in Europe, junior women seventh, senior men 18th and junior men 13th.
January 2009 saw the announcement of UK Sport’s funding for the next Olympiad cycle. Water Polo was one of the eight Olympic and four Paralympic sports whose funding was reduced due to a shortfall in money and water polo received a dramatic 75 per cent cut in funding from our potential full funding level available.
As a result, the programme was forced to significantly reduce and the national performance director and men’s head coach resigned. Focus for the new funding was placed on the women’s side while the aspiration was to still see both teams competing with distinction at the Olympic Games.
2009 saw a new set-up in terms of staffing, priorities and performance for British Water Polo. A more stringent focus on our two elite squads has seen performances continue to improve and be competitive against strong opposition. A result of this work meant in December 2010 we received the happier news of a slight increase in UK Sport funding.
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