2025 World Championships – Water Polo
- July 11-24, 2025
- OSBC Aquatic Centre, Singapore Sports Hub, Singapore
- Tournament Central
- 2024 Olympic Champions: Spain (women), Serbia (men)
- 2024 World Champions: United States (women), Croatia (men)
- 2025 World Cup Champions: Greece (women), Spain (men)
The Aquatics Integrity Unit (AQIU) issued suspensions to four water polo players during the 2025 World Championships mens’ and womens’ tournaments in Singapore.
All four suspensions will last beyond the tournaments, which concluded with the women’s gold medal game on July 23 and the men’s match on July 24.
Greece’s Aristeidis Chalyvopoulos got a two-game suspension before his team’s bronze medal victory against Serbia. Chalyvopoulos was issued the suspension for violent action during his country’s semi-final match against Spain, the eventual tournament champions. The suspension was announced on July 23, the day after the semifinal and the day before the bronze medal match.
On the same day, French national teamer Arianna Banchi also got slapped with a two-game suspension. Her suspension came because of misconduct during the 11-12 classification against Great Britain, which France lost.
AQUI’s heaviest suspension went to Italian men’s team member Matteo Iocchi. Following a quarterfinal face-off between Italy and Greece, in which Greece would go on to win, officials hit Iocchi with a four-game suspension for a violent action that occurred during the game.
Finally, Dutchwoman Simone Van De Kraats faced a two-game suspension following a 5-8 classification game against Italy. According to AQIU, the suspension came from violent action during the match. The Netherlands would go on to win the game and place 5th overall.
In addition to infractions such as the AQIU handles anti-doping and SafeSport as an operationally independent unit of World Aquatics. For the suspended water polo players, the World Championships were the final major international tournament on the 2025 calendar with the exception of the U20 Championships in August. Banchi is 19, so she could be suspended for her first games if she plays there. The other three athletes are all over 20 years old.
I’ve played waterpolo, and I was the hole-man on many occasions. This is a rough sport but what’s the violent action(s) that got these players suspended? I still have scars from my playing days, and nothing happened back then so curious what this is?
You can’t just say “violent action” and not say what the action was
yes, they just said that.