Olympics-Water polo-Flavor Flav helps US team taste success, says Steffens

By Amy Tennery

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. women's water polo team will chase a fourth consecutive gold in Paris with new mega-fan Flavor Flav in their corner, after the rapper backed their Olympic dream and brought a new level of attention to the sport.

Captain Maggie Steffens put out a call for support earlier this year and Flav leapt into action, offering to sponsor the team and lending them his celebrity spotlight in the process.

"He has really opened up the door... (for) different people who would have never heard of the sport of water polo. And that's exactly what sports like us need," said Steffens, the all-time leading scorer in Olympic water polo.

Flav upped the ante weeks later when he inked a five-year sponsorship deal with both the men's and women's teams, and a video of the 65-year-old hopping in the pool to train with the women's squad this summer went viral.

Goalkeeper Ashleigh Johnson, who was the first Black woman to make a U.S. Olympic water polo team in 2016, said the partnership has brought a more diverse community to her sport.

"I read through the comments and I see people asking questions about water polo and like people of color like wanting to start playing. And that's a different community than I've seen talk about our sport," she said.

Flav has also helped them to his celebrity connections, as the team sought out free tickets to popstar Taylor Swift's concert earlier this year in Paris, where they were competing in a test event.

"She was performing in the La Defense Arena, which is where the finals - quarters, semis and finals - for water polo will be. So for us to be able to visualize and kind of get to see the stadium, the only way was to try to go to a Taylor Swift concert," said Steffens.

Once again, Flav was there to help.

"Flavor Flav found out, and I know he reached out to their team, so I'm sure that helped," said Steffens. "Taylor Swift's team gifted our team tickets."

(Reporting by Amy Tennery in Paris, additional reporting by Sophie Penney; Editing by Christian Radnedge)