The U.S. women’s water polo team is targeting an unprecedented fourth straight Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Games, but with a new-look squad and arguably the toughest field yet assembled, its dominance in the pool will be tested.

Women’s water polo has been part of the Olympic program since 2000 with Australia, Italy and the Netherlands winning gold in the first three competitions.

But since the 2012 Games, the U.S. has stood on top of the podium, and in all three instances has been spurred to victory by current captain Maggie Steffens.

She is the all-time record goal-scorer at the Olympics with 56 in 19 matches, and will add to that tally in Paris, but she says the path to success this time around is full of obstacles.

"Each Olympics has its own identity, its own storyline," Steffens said. "This USA women's water polo team has never been to an Olympics together. Maybe some players have, but this is a new journey for this group. Your role changes, you as a person and an athlete change and mature [between Olympics], and so does the game itself."

Steffens believes the key to her team's recent success has been the culture within the U.S. women's water polo program.

"That started way before I joined the team [in 2009], from before women's water polo was even at the Olympics. A culture of hard work, of ‘team first’, that's probably one of the most important things to our program."

If Steffens is to collect a fourth gold, she insists this may be the toughest of the lot to win.

"It has gotten really competitive. All 10 teams are contenders. If you look at our bracket, we are playing Greece, Spain, Italy and France. That could easily be the top four right there. We must treat every game like a gold medal match."

Serbia has won the previous two gold medals in the men's competition, but has seen a downturn in fortunes in recent times.

They have a new coach in Uros Stevanovic, who was an assistant at the Tokyo Games, and finished ninth and seventh in the 2022 and 2024 European Championships, respectively.

"A lot of players no longer agreed to participate in the national team after the Olympics in Tokyo," Stevanovic told World Aquatics. "In Serbia everybody expects the past great results to be continued. It is very hard at the moment to live up to this expectation. I cannot say it's impossible, but it's very tough."