Dusan Mandic and Beatriz Ortiz overcome setbacks to reach pinnacle of water polo

SINGAPORE – Dusan Mandic and Beatriz Ortiz may be Olympic champions and the world’s best men and women’s water polo player respectively, but the road to success was fraught with bitter failures and disappointments.

In a phone interview ahead of the July 11-Aug 3 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, Mandic told The Straits Times: “If you think training is hard, try losing.”

The 2.02-metre Serb, born and raised in Montenegro, has come a long way since he was a “childish rebel” who and experimented with sports like karate, jiujitsu, sailing and tennis before settling on water polo.

His prowess in the pool grew as quickly as his growth spurt – he gained 20cm and 30kg from age 16 to 18 – as he started racking up championships since winning the youth world championship with Serbia in 2011.

After a bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, he led Serbia on a run of nine major titles, including gold at the 2015 world championships and Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympics.

However, while he also has three European crowns, the right-winger and driver has had his fair share of setbacks.

This included a seventh-placed finish after single-goal defeats by Montenegro and Spain at the 2013 world championships and the medal drought between the Tokyo and Paris Games.

But the heartbreaks only served to spur Mandic on to greater things.

“Sport teaches you a lot of things… you learn more through your losses, which I definitely did,” said the 30-year-old, who has earned a reputation for being a clutch player in the biggest occasions.

“I realised hard practice and hard trainings are the best way and the only way to improve yourself.

“During the losses, we were the favourites and had a lot of quality, but we wouldn’t have bounced back if the whole team didn’t admit what was wrong.

“We looked at each other and said, we are not going to let this happen again. It gave us positive energy and with the big quality we had, we managed to achieve some incredible results.”

For his clutch performances, he was named 2024 World Aquatics Male Water Polo Player of the Year. While he said the individual accolade “doesn’t mean a lot” without the team success, he acknowledged it was validation that he was on the right track as a player.

Among his Olympic victories, Paris 2024, when Serbia beat Croatia 13-11 in the final, was the most significant as nobody gave them a chance because they had not made the podium in any major tournament after winning at the delayed Games in Tokyo in 2021.

Mandic said: “We took advantage of that, and even now when I think about it, it’s like how did we do it? It’s unbelievable, really.”

For the upcoming world championships, Serbia were drawn into Group A alongside Italy, Romania and South Africa.

Other than looking forward to visiting “futuristic” Singapore as a tech geek, Mandic hopes his team can build on the Paris success to return to the podium after finishing failing to make the semi-finals at the last four editions.

On their world championships title drought, he said: “Our team have changed a lot, especially after the Tokyo Olympics. There were many new players, and I saw the European and world championships as preparation for the Olympics because we needed time to grow.

“Now, we definitely have the momentum, chemistry and belief to do well in Singapore. We have created something and we have found our game. We played amazingly in the elimination phase in Paris and everybody in the team is looking forward to Singapore.

“Between Tokyo and Paris, we didn’t win any medals. We suffered a lot of frustration and learnt a lot during this time before we bloomed in Paris. And now we want to continue this.”

In the women’s game, Spain’s Ortiz followed a similar trajectory.

She was a gymnast growing up in football-mad Barcelona before switching to water polo after being influenced by her two brothers.

The 29-year-old driver shared that gymnastics helped instil the dedication, effort, and toughness to “endure things I never thought I’d be able to handle”, which included narrowly missing out on the 13 players called up to the national team at the start of her career.

Spain were fifth at the 2016 Olympics and were outplayed by the United States in the final of the Tokyo Games before a heartbreaking shoot-out defeat by the Netherlands in the final of the 2023 world championships.

Against all odds, they rebounded in Paris, where Ortiz scored four goals in the 11-9 final victory over Australia as Spain racked up a perfect seven wins for a historic Olympic gold.

Ortiz said: “The only way to overcome all those setbacks is as a team. We had good and bad years, tough moments and great ones. But we couldn’t have gotten through any of that without our teammates. No matter how hard the previous years had been, we knew we wanted that gold and we weren’t willing to let it slip away again.”

The Spaniards will approach the upcoming world championships with the same mentality as they have not won it since they were hosts in 2013. This year, they will begin their campaign in Group D alongside Britain, South Africa and France.

Ortiz said: “We are a country that doesn’t like to give up, and no matter what it takes, no matter what we have to go through, we’ll keep fighting to make our dreams come true.”

• David Lee is senior sports correspondent at The Straits Times focusing on aquatics, badminton, basketball, cue sports, football and table tennis.

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