By Keiran Gorsky
It’s two watery worlds for Ottawa’s Jessica Gaudreault.
There was hardly ever a dull moment during her second professional season in Spain, which is home to one of the world’s top leagues for women’s water polo.
Gaggles of crazed fans would beat their drums and screech into their horns from the stands. Sometimes, they threw themselves over the railing to confront disagreeable referees.
“Like, they light fireworks in the pools,” Gaudreault recalls of a Champions League game in Greece.
It’s been comparatively quiet on the international stage, where the 31-year-old goalkeeper hasn’t donned the Canadian maple leaf since her Olympic debut last summer in Paris.
The Canadian women are notably absent from the 2025 World Aquatics Championships, currently underway in Singapore.
Due to “multiple factors, including timing of the event following the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and budgetary considerations,” Water Polo Canada elected to send only a men’s team to last fall’s Pan American Championships, which served as the qualifier for the worlds.
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The Canadian men had been without significant international play themselves after failing to qualify for the Paris Olympics, but they are now four games into their World Championships and will be playing in the 9-12th place classification bracket.
Bogdan Djerkovic is Canada’s captain, while fellow Ottawa Titans products Aleksa Gardijan, Andrej Gavric and David Lapins are also on the team.
The World Championships are seen as the most important competition in water polo aside from the Olympics, magnified by its presence as a multi-discipline event alongside swimming, diving and artistic swimming.
It’s the first time Gaudreault has missed the World Championships in her career
since she first joined the senior national team 12 seasons ago. It’s also the first time in the competition’s 39-year existence that Canada’s women’s team aren’t involved.
“It really sucks,” Gaudreault says. “I never want to miss out on a competition.”
In place of a tournament, a new-face Canadian women’s side travelled to Montreal last week to begin a three-week long training camp at the Olympic Pool. Only four players from Paris remain on the roster. The venue can sit roughly 3,000 people, but up above, all the seats are empty.
It’s an especially stark contrast for Gaudreault, who has grown accustomed to playing week in and week out before those boisterous crowds. Her Catalonian club based in Terrassa, an industrial city some 40 minutes from Barcelona, finished third in the league this year, playing several closely-contested matches against local rivals and perennial powerhouses in Sabadell and Sant Andreau.
“I wanted to compete with the best,” Gaudreault explains. “The Spanish league is the most competitive league we have.”
Those clubs are incidentally home to many of the players on the #1-ranked Spanish team that bested Canada 18-8 at the quarter-finals in Paris and went on to win the gold medal. Four of Gaudreault’s Terrassa teammates are also representing their countries at the World Aquatics Championships.
Absent international commitments, Gaudreault has been going in and out of rehabilitation from a lower-body tendon injury she suffered in December that became gradually less bearable over the course of the season. As a result, it’s been far and away her quietest off-season in recent memory.
This summer, Gaudreault has managed to pair flights around Europe with short training stints with other professional teams. She’s found time to visit England, Denmark and the Netherlands. Friends and teammates based in Europe think she’s a little crazy.
“They’re like ‘Oh, but it’s so far,’” laughs the Capital Wave product. “And I’m like ‘No, no, no. You don’t understand what it’s like to fly to B.C. or Calgary.’”
The silver lining for Gaudreault, in the niggling tendon injury and the break from international play, is enjoying the modicum of relaxation she’s usually missed. Her post-Olympic break lasted all of a month before she was off to Spain, where the season runs from October straight through to the beginning of May.
“I have to give my body a little R and R, control my load and come back stronger,” she highlights.
But it’s only that — a silver lining. Somewhat startlingly, Gaudreault’s family hasn’t got to see her play a whole lot of water polo in her career, with tournament play so frequently in far-off countries. Before the Olympics, family members hadn’t come en masse to watch her play since all the way back in 2015 for the Pan Am Games in Toronto.
Thinking back to Paris, more than anything, Gaudreault finds herself remembering her family in the stands, her no-longer-so-little cousins she hadn’t seen in years, and their slow and collective realization of everything she’d sacrificed to be an Olympian.
“Coming from a family that immigrated from India and really be like, ‘Yeah, we’re Canadians, is really cool,” Gaudreault underlines.
Read More: Water polo goalie Jessica Gaudreault ready for high point of rollercoaster ride to the Olympics
In Montreal – despite how it may seem from the outside with the departure of so many Olympic team members – Gaudreault is adamant that things are looking up.
In June, the women’s team brought in a new head coach in Kyriaki Liosi, who has had great success in the top division of Greek women’s water polo. Gaudreault’s first impression is that Liosi will be focusing to a far greater extent on rapid and dynamic movement. Fans can expect a faster pace of play the next time they watch.
The next World Aquatics Championships, Gaudreault notes, will be the first international tournament experience for most of her new teammates. The 2027 event in Hungary will also serve as a qualifier for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It’s not exactly ideal, Gaudreault agrees, but the young team remains optimistic.
“I started off as one of the youngest,” Gaudreault says of the national team, “and now I’m one of the oldest. All the new girls are really excited and they’re eager to learn.”