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FOR AND AGAINST: BEACH VOLLEYBALL
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Where does all this cynicism come from? You ask athletes to play their sport, to do
their training. You put the stars of the sport in bikinis and ask them to frolic in
the sand because the cameras love it, and everyone is up in arms. Where was the
outcry when Mary Jose Perec's running shorts in the Atlanta games appeared to be ever
so briefer than all others? Yes, her sponsors loved that too.
Ok, so beach volleyball became the principal activity in a French nudist camp in
Franconville, a suburb of Paris in 1927. But the sport originated in California in
the early 1920s when families threw up nets on the beach around Santa Monica. Our
ignorance of beach volleyball comes not from its pedigree as a serious Olympic sport
but because of our climate. If the island of Ireland drifted 300 miles south, we too
would be unpacking our sun screen, shades and thongs and wondering what hurling was
all about. - Johnny Watterson
How this game ever got off the beaches of California and into the sacred Olympic circus
defies all logic. This is a game for those sun-worshippers who have nothing better to
do than compare the glow of their bronzed bodies and think that if all else fails, they
can always get a part in Baywatch.
Beach volleyball is great for killing a Saturday afternoon on the Santa Monica
surf (or Brittas Bay if you really want to make a fool of yourself), but think how
biased it is against places like Mullingar.
Worst of all, the powers that be ignored the pleas of those sensible people on Sydney's
Bondi Beach and constructed a monstrous 10,000-seater court which will cause irreparable
ecological damage, not to mention ruining the set of Home and Away for a couple of
weeks. And for what? To give a bunch of bare-footed, handclapping Ivy League exports
their day in the sun. Hope it rains like hell on them. - Ian O'Riordan
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YOU VOTE
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FIVE RING CIRCUS
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Everything you never wanted to know about the Sydney Games, and more
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GALLERY
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An online gallery of the XXVIIth Olympiad
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OLYMPIC EVOLUTION
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Chart the growth of Olympic sport as it moves into the 21st Century
The things they say
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