SYDNEY, Australia (CP) -- Waneek Horn-Miller, the water polo player pictured in the nude on the cover of the Canadian edition of Time magazine's Olympic preview issue, says she's honoured to have been given the opportunity to draw attention to her sport.
 
 Commenting for the first time on the cover, Horn-Miller, 24, of Kahnawake, Que., said the point she hopes she relayed in agreeing to being photographed wearing nothing more than an eagle feather in her jet black hair and holding a water polo ball was "the strength, pride and determination" of Canada's team.
 
 Women's water polo is an official Olympic sport for the first time. Official opening ceremonies are Friday, and Canada's water polo team plays its first game Saturday against Russia. Horn-Miller and her teammates are confident they are good enough to land on the podium when all is said and done.
 
 For now, most of the buzz around Canada's team centres on the now-famous colour photograph of Horn-Miller, who wasn't in Canada when the magazine hit news stands back home a week ago. The players were already in Australia.
 
 She first saw the cover during the weekend, and she autographed a copy for the first time during a team news conference Monday.
 
 "It's a trend at these Olympics," she said of the numerous publications that include nude photos of athletes. "Back in 1976 in Montreal (where the Summer Games were staged that year) it would have been a scandal.
 
 "But now the body is being viewed as a beautiful thing. Maybe in Athens (at the 2004 Olympics) everybody will be nude."
 
 Her comment is accompanied by a mischievous grin.
 
 "I was very, very honoured to be on the cover," she said. "They said, 'It will be a nude cover,' and I said, 'Ooookay.'
 
 She ran the idea past her teammates before agreeing to pose.
 
 "She approached us about it and we said, 'Yeah, go for it,"' said captain Cora Campbell. "It's great. Everyone was really supportive and that made her a lot more comfortable with her decision."
 
 "It's the best thing that could ever happen," agreed teammate Marie-Claude Deslieres, a mother of three. "The more people that talk about water polo the better."
 
 Horn-Miller's mother was with her during the photo session in Montreal. The shoot took a day and a half to complete.
 
 "I'm very comfortable with my own body but it's a funny thing to see myself on the cover of Time," said Horn-Miller. "My mother said, 'You're not going to have that body forever.
 
 "So, one day I'm going to look back at it and go, 'Wow."'
 
 It is not the first photo of Horn-Miller that has received attention across Canada. Ten years ago, while holding her younger sister in her arms, she was jabbed by a bayonet on the protest line during the Oka clash between her First Nations Mohawk community and soldiers. She fell to the ground clutching her chest as photographers captured the moment.
 
 "A centimetre either way and I probably would have died," she recalled.
 
 She became a stronger person through that experience, she says.
 
 "I got an education in political science (at Carleton University) so I could understand why these things happen," she said. "I always had an Olympic dream and Oka helped fine-tune me to get here.
 
 "My being here shows that you can take life experiences and not let them set you back. You just keep going forward."