YOUNG AMERICAN HAVING A BALL IN THE POOL
By David Leon Moore, USA Today, August 10, 2004
(photo by Robert Hanashiro)

LONG BEACH, Calif. — He has yet to be part of an Olympic winning team, but everything else seems to have come early and fast for U.S. water polo star Tony Azevedo. Even his last name goes from A to Z in two letters.

Lounging in the pool and having a ball: U.S. Olympic water polo player Tony Azevedo, who is taking his All-World credentials to Athens for the Summer Games.

He switched countries when he was 23 days old, moving with his parents from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to California.

He had a brush with death at 4, suffering a nearly fatal torn trachea after falling on a metal cage. His heart stopped beating for four minutes, and he was pronounced dead.

"Even after he was revived, the doctors told us he might have brain damage," Libby Azevedo, his mother, says. "He'd certainly never do any sports, they said."

At 8, he was hanging with the U.S. junior national water polo team that his father, Ricardo, a former water polo star in Brazil, was coaching.

At 14, he was a wide-eyed ball boy at the Olympic water polo tournament in Atlanta, where his dad served as an assistant coach on the U.S. team that finished seventh.

As a high school freshman at Long Beach Wilson, he was already the best prep water polo player in Southern California. He'd go on to win three Southern California player of the year awards, and his team won four consecutive titles. The first three were coached by his father, who then was hired to coach the men's team at Long Beach State.

At 16, while still in high school, he began playing for the U.S. national team, an almost unheard of occurrence in a sport played — and played fiercely — by large, muscular men in their 20s and 30s.

And, at the ripe old age of 18, he began his Olympic career, starting for the U.S. team that finished sixth in the Sydney Olympics, scoring an impressive 13 goals and being named to the All-World team.

He then turned down a chance to earn a six-figure salary playing professionally in Europe and accepted a scholarship to Stanford. He promptly led the Cardinal to the 2001 and '02 national titles and a runner-up finish in '03.

He has been the college player of the year three times, setting a school freshman scoring record (68 goals), a single-season school record as a sophomore (95, or 3.4 goals a game) and, after his junior season, held the Stanford career record with 252 goals.

Yet Azevedo, 6-1, 195, tanned and barrel-chested, blond and handsome, polite and articulate, knows there is something missing.

His coach knows it, too. And his sport knows it.

Azevedo, 22, has seemed destined to become the world's greatest water polo player nearly since the day he was born, and there are those who say he already is.

But the case would be a lot stronger with a certain credential — an Olympic championship, which would also be his country's first in men's water polo.

"He is an extraordinarily talented player," U.S. coach Ratko Rudic says, "and he will arrive at the top level of the sport. But he needs the team result.

"For the good players on the winning team, those are the extraordinary players. So with a good team result, he will be recognized as absolutely one of the greatest players in the world, maybe the greatest."
Time comes to be a leader

Rudic knows something about good team results. He won gold and silver medals playing for Yugoslavia, then coached Yugoslavia to two gold medals — in 1984 and '88, with the USA taking silver both times — and then coached Italy to a gold in 1992 and a bronze in '96.

Azevedo is more familiar with disappointing Olympic results — from the U.S. men's team, anyway. He remembers the long faces of the U.S. players in Atlanta after they finished seventh. And he remembers the bitter taste of the 11-10 quarterfinal loss to Russia in the last Olympics, the game ending with Azevedo unable to get off a final shot.

Azevedo is one of only three returning Olympians — with 31-year-old team captain Wolf Wigo and Ryan Bailey, 28 — on a rebuilt team that has been severely tested mentally and physically by the maniacal workout schedule of Rudic.

Rudic was hired in 2001 to try to bring his magic to U.S. water polo. Early on, he let Azevedo know that despite his young age, he would be expected to not only score lots of goals but also provide leadership to a relatively inexperienced squad.

"I can be a leader," Azevedo says, "but the truth is, when we start our first game in Athens, I'm going to be just as nervous as the rest of them. Hopefully, we can come together as a team and just play."

The USA comes into the Olympics ranked sixth in the world. But Azevedo can feel the expectations for a medal.

"Every Olympic cycle, you feel that," he says. "You feel, 'OK, it's time for us to do something.' We're a young team, but we've worked so hard and we've trained so much and we've made our goal these Olympics right now."

Well conditioned, in all respects

Azevedo hopes it doesn't take him as long as it took his idol to win a gold medal.

As a kid, he of course rooted for the U.S. teams his dad was coaching. But he also cheered for Spain's Manuel Estiarte, who, like Azevedo, was relatively small, speedy and an offensive star capable of stealing a game.

Estiarte, like Azevedo, started in his first Olympics at 18. He retired after the 2000 Olympics — his sixth — as the all-time leading Olympic scorer.

It wasn't until his fifth Olympics, at 34 in Atlanta, that he won a gold medal. Three years later, Azevedo, then 17, was in a pool playing against Estiarte.

"I just remember thinking, 'Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm doing this,' " Azevedo says.

Emotionally, he was a wreck. Physically, he did just fine.
He always does. Azevedo is well known in his sport for his upper body strength, agility and creativity. And even though water polo has few hard-core fans, word of his athleticism has crept outside the sport. Last year, Men's Journal surveyed a group of sports experts from a wide spectrum and came up with its list of the top 20 athletes in the world. Azevedo was ranked No.7.

In the last three years, he has been the leading scorer at a number of international tournaments and he will likely be among the top goal-scorers in Athens.

As for the team's chances, Rudic isn't predicting a medal. But he says it's possible. And he guarantees this: the U.S. team will be better conditioned than any other.

And, if the team gets a break or two and ends up in the final, it believes it has just the right player to take the final shot.