Ivan Vasiljevic & Jovan Gardasevic

The Olympic Games always offer great interest when it comes to water polo. Currently, many selections have an approximate quality and details determine who will win. Prior to the tournament the authors wanted to verify body composition and anthropometric characteristics of players of the three national teams, Serbia, the United States of America (USA) and Montenegro. The purpose of this research was to determine the differences in body composition and anthropometric characteristics between the water polo players of the national team of Serbia and Olympic champion in Tokyo 2021, the national team of USA which took sixth place and the national team of Montenegro, which took the eighth place. Body mass index, fat percentage and muscle mass (body composition variables) were evaluated by Bioelectric Impedance type MC-980 and body height, body weight, triceps skinfold, biceps skinfold, skinfold of the back, abdominal skinfold, upper leg skinfold, lower leg skinfold (other anthropometric characteristics) were evaluated by an anthropometer and a calliper. ANOVA showed that there was a statistically significant difference in fat percentage. The LSD post hoc test showed statistically significant differences between the water polo players of the Montenegrin national team (13.33 %) compared to the water polo players of the USA national team (16.67 %). It can be stated that water polo players from Montenegro had a statistically significantly lower fat percentage than water polo players from the USA and a lower level of fat than water polo players from Serbia, though this was not statistically significant. Although the fat percentage is a disruptive factor with athletes, it had no effect on the result at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, because Serbia eventually won the gold medal, the USA obtained sixth place, and Montenegro eighth place. It means that some other abilities influenced the results at the Tokyo Olympics in water polo, for example tactical, physical, psychological, technical... which is to be shown by some other research.

KEY WORDS: Water polo players; Body composition; Anthropometric characteristics; Olympic Games.

VASILJEVIC, I. & GARDASEVIC, J. Tokyo 2021 Olympic water polo champions and their anthropometric characteristics and body composition compared to other players. Int. J. Morphol., 41(6):1758-1763, 2023.