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Professional water polo player Tony Azevedo, who serves as captain of the men’s U.S. National Water Polo Team and has competed in three Olympics, travels more than 90 days a year.

Azevedo plays for a Croatian team during the professional water polo season (from August through May), flying commercial all over Europe. During the summer, he trains with Team USA and travels around the world for tournaments.

“The only equipment we need to take are caps, and the team usually takes these (or gives them to the youngest team members to transport),” he wrote in an e-mail from the road. “We are all in charge of bringing our own robes, sandals, suits and any other gear we need.”

“I wear my Intelliskin shirt and pants to help with posture and circulation, and then any team gear that I have chosen for the trip (as captain),” writes Azevedo, who doesn’t check his baggage. He also makes sure to bring his fully loaded iPad, headphones and a neck pillow.

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U.S. Olympic water polo captain Tony Azevedo has always considered himself a “dog person” and never really considered adopting a cat—that is, until he saved a cat’s life. For the last two years, Azevedo has lived in Montenegro playing professional water polo. He says one of the first things that he noticed about the area is how many stray animals there are, especially cats. While there, he and his fellow polo players took to the animals and grew to love them, but they knew that it was only temporary care—as traveling athletes, they couldn’t take the animals on the road.

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At the end of this week, Team USA will storm London, vying for the top medal count in the 2012 Olympic Games. When the Games begin, Olympic water polo player Tony Azevedo will join in the team’s quest for gold.

Azevedo is currently the captain of the US National Team, and has achieved a high degree of success in the water. Considered to be one of the best American water polo players in recent memory, Azevedo is gearing up for his second Olymipcs. But his success isn’t just rooted in his special athletic ability. Out of the pool, Azevedo is an avid animal lover with pets of his own at home. In an effort to capture the animal loving spirit of the Olympians representing the USA, we sat down with Tony to learn more about him and his pets.

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Widely considered one of the world’s top water polo players, Tony Azevedo takes a break from training to talk with PCMag about his favorite apps, waterproof tech, and the upcoming Olympic Games.

Many people have never been to the gym, let alone the Olympic Games. But Tony Azevedo, captain of the USA’s National Men’s Water Polo Team, is heading to London to compete in his fourth. Azevedo has a water polo résumé that would make any landlubber gasp for air.

He joined Team USA in 1998 and played in his first Games at age 18 in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He went on to play for Stanford University, where he led his team to two NCAA championships (2001, 2002). At the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the attacker led Team USA with 15 goals. Finally, at the 2008 Games in Beijing, his 17 goals helped Team USA win a silver medal, its first Olympic medal in 20 years.

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THOUSAND OAKS (CBS) – Long Beach’s Tony Azevedo, known as the Michael Jordan of his sport, scored 17 goals in the Beijing games to lead the U.S. to a impressive silver medal-finish. The heart of that team, a veteran group filled with world-class players, is back and hungry for gold.

This team, who trains at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, has done something no other Olympic water polo team has done which is to forgo lucrative contracts overseas in order to train together for 8 months. Last Olympics the team was together for only 3 months. They have put all the pressure on themselves by passing up all that money for chance at Olympic gold.

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Nicknames in sports are often subtle, a way for teammates to share an inside joke or longtime friends to remind a star where he came from.

With Tony Azevedo, however, there is no such intricacy: Azevedo, at times, has been known as the Savior in the water polo community because, quite simply, that is what he is supposed to be.

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Photo courtesy of USA Water Polo, Alberto Lingria of US Presswire

There are two Tony Azevedos. The first is an internationally famous water polo player, one of the best in the world, who has played professionally in Italy, Croatia, and Montenegro. This Tony Azevedo was nicknamed “The Savior” by one European magazine, and is often referred to as “the Michael Jordan of his sport,” as an NBC announcer who spotted him at a Kings game put it.

Then there’s Long Beach’s Tony Azevedo. An understated, humble son of the city who loves to relax in his hometown, where he grew up following his father, Ricardo, from pool to pool. This Azevedo is spotted not infrequently at Schooner or Later and Joe Jost’s in the summer.

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When Tony Azevedo gets into the water, he’s at home wherever he is. As captain of the U.S. National Men’s Water Polo Team, Tony has traveled the world representing the U.S.A., as well as working for various professional teams abroad. For the last year, the Long Beach, Calif., native has been living and training with his U.S. teammates in Thousand Oaks, Calif., swimming 4,000 to 5,000 meters a day to build endurance in preparation for the July 27 start of the Summer Olympic Games in London. We caught up with him to talk about life in the water and on the home front.

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Last time, they missed the gold. Team USA Water Polo left the 2008 Olympics in Beijing with a silver medal. It was the highest Olympic finish in 20 years for an American team—but it wasn’t enough. And in just over a month, the team will be back in London to try for one step higher.

Turn on Team USA’s first game on July 29, and you’ll be able to pick out its leader: He’s 30-year-old, 6-foot-1-inch tall, three-time Olympian Tony Azevedo. Watch him play, and you’ll understand why he’s captain. And while the Rio de Janeiro-born star is somewhat of water polo royalty—his father played the sport at the Olympic level, too—Azevedo’s missing his crown.

As part of our ongoing coverage leading up to London next month, we sat down with Azevedo to get his thoughts on vying for the gold, learn how he stays motivated, and everything in between. Here’s what he had to say.

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Below is the content and video from an article that was originally written when Tony was in Dallas, Texas for an Olympic Athlete Media Summit.

“It’s a lot of things you do for the Olympics — a lot of jerseys you sell. We play the whole summer. I do think guys should be compensated. Just like I think college players should be compensated as well. Unfortunately, it’s not there. But I think it should be something, you know, there for it.”
— Dwyane Wade, Miami Heat star and erstwhile member of Team USA

Here’s hoping that should Mr. Wade decide to grace London with his presence this summer (he’s presently on the fence with regard to his Olympic involvement for reasons that hopefully have more to do with nagging injuries and less with the size of his paycheck from US Basketball), he finds time to meet Tony Azevedo, Merrill Moses and the rest of the US men’s water polo team for a little refresher course on the Olympic spirit.

That’s because the American water polo players are not only seemingly content to represent their country free of charge, but they’ve also taken the unprecedented step of forgoing their professional salaries for a year so they can pursue Olympic glory.

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