BEIJING // Croatia's water polo players believe their team moustaches, grown especially for Beijing, will prove their lucky charm at the Olympics. The world champions showed up for today's game against Italy sporting everything from a few wisps of hair to full moustaches. "It's for good luck, but we can't talk about it, it's a secret, if I tell you, it will ruin it," Igor Hinic said. "Maybe it's working, it worked today, but it's too early to tell," Hinic said after Croatia beat Italy 11:7. The team began cultivating facial hair after goalkeeper Josip Pavic showed up to a training camp with a moustache. "We have spent three months together training, maybe it was too much, and we have gone little crazy," said Barac Samir, who sports one of the team's thickest moustaches.
Montenegro, the new boys on the Olympic block, held champions Hungary to a draw after fighting back from being three goals down. The former Yugoslav republic, making its debut in the Olympics after declaring independence from its union with Serbia in June 2006, has emerged as a force in water polo on the world stage, winning the European championships in July. "We have to be happy to come back from being three goals down against one of the best teams in the world," Montenegro's coach Petar Porobic told reporters after the men's preliminary round game. Hungary held the three goal lead in the third quarter but a defensive collapse allowed Montenegro to make a comeback and take a late lead before Hungary tied the game at 10-10. "This is a recurring theme with us. We take a 3-4 goal lead then ease up before breaking the opponent," said the Hungarian player Tamas Kasas. "But it's quite something we could bring this back for a tie ... and I think we'll grow stronger by each game." The USA team easily beat China when the American defence completely shut down the host nation's attack tactics and took the game 8-4. "I think the main thing was defensively we played pretty well," said the US head coach Terry Schroeder. "We had a couple of lapses where we kind of let them get back into the game but we had four quarters of good defences and that's what it's going to take to beat some of these better teams," said Schroeder. Serbia, Olympic silver medallists in Athens, struggled early as Germany capitalised on defensive errors but found their rhythm to win 11-7, helped by four goals from Dusko Pijetlovic. *Reuters