Water polo at the 1900 Summer Olympics
A water polo tournament was held on the Seine on 11 and 12 August 1900 as part of the 1900 Summer Olympics. Eight teams from four countries, all European, entered the event, although only seven ended up playing. The Osborne Swimming Club of Manchester, England, which has been listed with two rosters that are nearly entirely different, became the first Olympic water polo champions by defeating the Brussels Swimming and Water Polo Club of Belgium. Third place went to the two French-based semi-finalists, Libellule de Paris and Pupilles de Neptune de Lille, the latter of whom entered two teams, but merged them together after the first round.
Background
Water polo, and team sport in general, made its Olympic debut at the 1900 Summer Games held in Paris, France. The tournament was to be played by the less violent and more restrictive "English rules", which, along with the cost of traveling to Paris, deterred any American teams from participating. Seven teams, representing at least four countries, took part in the competition. Four squads were based in the host nation: two from Pupilles de Neptune de Lille and one each from Libellule de Paris and Tritons Lillois. The Brussels Swimming and Water Polo Club, Berliner Swimming Club, and Osborne Swimming Club were based in Belgium, Germany, and Manchester, Great Britain respectively. A second squad from the Osborne Swimming Club was entered, but did not participate.Team composition
The composition of several of the teams in Paris differs across sources and not all teams were composed solely of members who were nationals of the countries in which their clubs were based. Libellule de Paris has been listed as having a player by the name of "Devenot", but Olympic historian Bill Mallon identifies this player as Jules Clévenot, who also competed in swimming events at the Games. Their squad also included Bill Burgess, a Briton who would later become the second man to swim across the English Channel. The first Pupilles de Neptune de Lille team contained a Belgian national, Philippe Houben. Three members of this squad, Favier, Leriche, and Charles Treffel, joined the second Pupilles de Neptune de Lille team after the first was eliminated from the tournament. They seem to have replaced four players, Camelin, Fiolet, Gellé, and Louis Marc, who competed for the second Pupilles de Neptune de Lille lineup only in the first round.German sources do not list Hans Aniol, Max Hainle, or Herbert von Petersdorff as members of the Berliner Swimming Club, mentioning Gustav Erpf, Asmus Simonsen, and Max Schöne instead, but Mallon notes that there is proof contemporary to the tournament for the participation of only the former trio. Three members of the Brussels Swimming and Water Polo Club, Georges Romas, Guillaume Séron, and A. R. Upton, are also left off of some lists despite evidence that they participated in the first round. The roster for the Osborne Swimming Club as listed by the International Olympic Committee is Thomas Coe, John Henry Derbyshire, Peter Kemp, William Lister, Arthur G. Robertson, Eric Robinson, and George Wilkinson. Lister, however, had died two weeks prior to the Games, while Derbyshire, Robinson, and Wilkinson all played water polo matches in England either during the tournament or too soon after it to have traveled back from Paris in time. A list of players contemporary to the match does not include Robertson, but does list Coe and Kemp in addition to Robert Crawshaw, William Henry, John Arthur Jarvis, Victor Lindberg, and Frederick Stapleton. Lindberg has been considered the first New Zealand Olympian, although he "was born in Fiji to Swedish and Irish parents, lived in New Zealand from a young age and, in Paris, represented a British club."
Full rosters
All entries are listed as per Mallon's "The 1900 Olympic Games" unless otherwise noted:| Place | Team | Nation | Players |
| 1 | Osborne Swimming Club | Thomas Coe Robert Crawshaw William Henry John Arthur Jarvis Peter Kemp Victor Lindberg Frederick Stapleton | |
| 2 | Brussels Swimming and Water Polo Club | Jean de Backer Victor de Behr Henri Cohen Fernand Feyaerts Oscar Grégoire Albert Michant Georges Romas Guillaume Séron Victor Sonnemans A. R. Upton | |
| 3 | Libellule de Paris | Bill Burgess Jules Clévenot / Devenot Alphonse Decuyper Louis Laufray Henri Peslier Auguste Pesloy Paul Vasseur | |
| 3 | Pupilles de Neptune de Lille #2 | Auguste Camelin Eugène Coulon Fardelle Favier Antoine Fiolet Pierre Gellé Leriche Louis Marc Louis Martin Désiré Mérchez Charles Treffel | |
| 5 | Berliner Swimming Club | Hans Aniol Paul Gebauer Max Hainle Georg Hax Gustav Lexau Herbert von Petersdorff Fritz Scheider | |
| 5 | Pupilles de Neptune de Lille #1 | Favier Philippe Houben Leriche Georges Leuillieux Ernest Martin René Tartara Charles Treffel | |
| 5 | Tritons Lillois | Joseph Bertrand Victor Cadet Maurice Hochepied Jean Leclerq Léon Tisserand Charles Devendeville Jules Verbecke |