Four WAIS scholarship athletes have been named in the Australian Stingers’ training squad for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
WA water polo players; Gemma Beadsworth, Glencora McGhie, Zoe Arancini and Lilian Hedges are all members of the 16-strong squad, which will be trimmed to the final 13, for the Olympic squad in June.
Beadsworth and McGhie both hold Olympic experience, with Beadsworth featuring in bronze medal winning Stingers teams of Beijing 2008 and London 2012, whilst McGhie was a medal winning teammate of Beadsworth’s four years ago.
Arancini enjoyed a breakthrough campaign in 2015, earning nomination to the FINA World All Star side following the culmination of the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, where the Stingers finished fourth.
Hedges is regarded as one of the country’s finest goalkeepers, and played a star role as Australia won an historic World University Games title in 2015.
The Stingers will step up their Rio preparations with a three test series in Perth against China, with the matches comprising part of a training camp for the team. The first two matches will be played at UWA’s Aquatic Centre on Thursday 28 and Saturday 30 of January, with the final Test hosted at the Bicton Pool on Tuesday February 2.
Beadsworth – who has returned to the sport after a break post London – believes this team has the ability to win Australia’s first gold medal in the sport since the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000.
“I wouldn’t have considered coming back and working towards another Olympic Games if I didn’t believe this group had what it takes to achieve our ultimate goal of winning,” she said.
“We are coming up to the first training camp for 2016 and that is certainly about setting the timing for the remainder of the year. We have the test events against China, World League Finals and then it’s really taking it month by month.
“It was good to finish last year with the win in Rio (Test Event), after we didn’t get the results we’d hoped for in Russia (World Championships). We believed we had what it takes to get the gold and to walk away from the Rio tour achieving that result was great,” said Beadsworth.
