Hannah Buckling: Olympics water polo star ready for Tokyo 2020
Hannah Buckling’s journey to the Tokyo Olympics hasn’t been smooth – but she’s older and wiser this time.
Mosman
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As a sporty kid growing up on the north shore, Hannah Buckling tried her hand at everything. Little Athletics, Nippers, swimming, netball, softball – the list goes on. But there was one game that completely stumped her: water polo.
“I was awful at it, truly awful,” says Buckling, now an Olympian and Australian water polo centre back. “There were only two teams and I was in the bottom one.”
She was introduced to the game in a high school swimming class at Wenona School in North Sydney. The game didn’t come naturally to her — but the challenge brought out a streak of perseverance — the one which runs through to the core of all elite athletes.
That grit and determination led her to represent Australia in water polo at the Rio Olympics in 2016 — the thrill of walking out in the green and gold at the opening ceremony starting her first Games experience on a high. But she played just three games before she was punched by a Brazilian opponent. The impact fractured her eye socket and ended the Brazilian Olympic ride.
Rio was a disappointment for the squad and a bittersweet experience for Buckling. She had intended to compete at just one Olympics and then focus on her exams. (She is midway through medicine at Sydney University and has put her studies on hold to concentrate on training).
But when she crashed out after being punched, she sat at the edge of the pool watching as her team lost the quarterfinal in penalties and finished the tournament in sixth place. She had difficulty coming to terms with the result after years of training for a podium finish.
She acknowledges the punch wasn’t unprovoked. She had been grappling with another player for the entire game and finally her opponent lost her temper and snapped. For Hannah, the incident proved to be a turning point. She changed the way she plays significantly and now approaches the game in a smarter way instead of resorting to physicality.
And, although she had planned to only go to one Olympics, that sudden end to her game made her crave more. Buckling is now training for her second Olympics with the Aussie Stingers – the nickname given to the women’s water polo team — and is in with a strong chance of bringing home a medal.
In September she moved to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra for intense daily training with the team ahead of Tokyo 2020. This finished just before Christmas and she is now training with the Sydney University Lions and joining up with the Stingers at different points through the season.
She spends about five hours a day in the pool combined with three weights sessions every week.
The Stingers are going into the games this time with confidence after winning a bronze medal at the world championships in July, strengthening their world ranking, which sits at third. Buckling is regarded as one of the best players on the team and was recently voted the best centre back in the world by Total Water Polo online magazine.
“She’s incredible,” says former Stinger Liz Weekes, who won gold at the Sydney Olympics.
“She’s just formidable in the water. She is so strong and she’s an awesome attacker and brilliant defender. I’ve never seen anyone as fit as her. I can’t wait to watch her in Tokyo.”
Buckling is excited at the prospect of Tokyo – the team leaves in July about 10 days before the games start. The squad won’t be officially announced until June but all Buckling needs to do is to stay fit and healthy to retain her place. There are 18 women on the squad now and 13 will travel to Tokyo.
“It’s very clichéd, but everything happens for a reason. Going into the (Rio) Olympics I was only ever going to do one and I was going to start medicine and move on to the next chapter of my life,” she says.
“Because I only got to play three games I felt I had unfinished business with water polo. I’m so unbelievably grateful I kept playing because these last three years I’ve fallen completely back in love with the sport.”
Her professional journey started when two of her friends tried out for a local club team. Buckling didn’t want to go but her mother, Rachel, intervened and made her join her friends at the trial for the Northern Beaches Breakers. Now, she is thankful she went. She won a spot in the squad, taking pride of place on the B team again. The club’s coach Jamie Ryan spotted her potential and set her on the path from second grade water polo to becoming one of the best players in the world.
“He was amazing. I credit him to everything I have done. He saw potential and helped me grow that,” she says. “I fell in love with it there … it took a while to pick it up but I liked the challenge.”
Buckling believes the majority of Australian sport is clean and doesn’t know of any female water polo players who have had a positive drug test. But, with the rise in popularity of unchecked protein powders and supplements, which she believes is putting athletes at risk, Buckling is very careful about what she eats. She won’t take a supplement unless it is batch tested for illicit substances. She has a simple but effective approach: don’t cheat.
“I’m very aware of what’s OK and what’s not OK,” she says. “I can see how it would happen accidentally for people who take a lot of supplements. I avoid supplements as much as possible because you don’t know. (Prescription) drugs are quite strictly controlled but supplements aren’t.”
For Buckling, water polo has been empowering. It has given her confidence in being a strong woman and it has given her a network of water polo friends around the world. One of her closest pals is fellow Mosman local and Stinger Tilly Kearns, daughter of rugby great, Phil Kearns.
Alongside her Olympic dream, Buckling wants to inspire young girls to play sport and to send a message that it’s not just for boys.
Women were excluded from playing water polo at the Olympics until the 2000 Sydney games and it had been a 20 year fight for the Stingers to win the right to play. Men had been playing Water Polo at the Olympics for 100 years.
The Australian players, including Weekes, protested, including standing at Sydney Airport in their cossies and storming an Olympic press conference. In late 1997, the women’s game was included in the Sydney Olympics — where Australia won gold.
“That protest was the tipping point,” Weekes says. “Within a couple of months we were told women’s water polo was going to be in the Olympics. “
Buckling believes there is now equality in the game and the main obstacle they face as athletes is getting it televised on free-to-air. An incredible sport to watch on screen, it only has a niche following in Australia and doesn’t command the same interest as swimming or athletics.
For other sports, she can see the challenges women face.
“I would definitely not say it’s equal,” she says. “If you look at AFL, football and cricket, there is still a long way to go for women. I’ve never seen being female as inhibitory to sport.
“It never once crossed my mind that I can’t do this because I’m a girl.”