Rio 2016: Life’s a beach when sport and glamour collide

"Dude, where's your bandana?" says TP, also a dude from Carlsbad, New Mexico. The two dudes are walking down the Rio strip, taking it all in as dudes do. This is how it is supposed to be.

After a week when temperatures inland at the hockey in Deodoro and the parched sprawl of the boxing in the Riocentro Arena reached 35 degrees, the sea breeze and sand at Copacabana beach was the picture of Rio we carry around in our minds.

Some things at this empty seated Olympic Games, they have gotten right. This is one: a scaffold arena five stories high no more than 50 metres from the breaking surf of the Atlantic Ocean, a warship in the bay.

In the air giant frigatebirds shaped like stealth fighters mix with vultures and soar around in circles as gun metal clouds of early morning give way to the sun.

London produced Wimbledon for tennis, Buckingham Palace for the cycling and the Princess Diana Memorial in Hyde Park for the Brownlee brothers scattering of the Triathlon field and on this up market strip of ocean real estate the organisers have built themselves a signature venue, a miniature cathedral.

"You can dig it," flashes up on the arena big screen as Australia's Mariafe Del Solar and Nicole Laird break from the tunnel thumbs up and waving fiercely with Switzerland's Isabelle Forrer and Anouk Verge-Depre on their tails.

Giant shot

The “You can dig it” disappears and a giant shot of Forrer’s glammed up photograph beams out pouting lips and sultry. Gloss. Impossibly waved hair. Mascara and are they . . . could they be false eyelashes?

Tennis does it. Athletics do it. They sell their sport, their product, the only difference today on Copacabana is beach volleyball is doing it in bikinis.

The four players are the main act in a packed hour of music and dance, where occasionally the stretching leap of right blocker Laird or sand dive of left defender Forrer out on Centre Court are incidental as noise saturates the place and fluffers with microphones drive the crowd into party mood.

In beach volleyball, like most modern sporting events, music and fatuous announcements have become intrusive appendages, places where silence has become a mortal enemy.

Bless Freddie Mercury and his gold embroidered cape but We will Rock You has morphed into a tried and trusted form of stadium Viagra. Any flaccid moment in the program and today that is during the minute long timeouts and boom they are stomping in the bleachers, the public announcer screaming "okay let's do it, everybody clap your hands" and six dancers lined along one side of the court busting their moves and grinding.

On court the players are sweating and the sand begins to stick. The first game Australia take 21-19 as the sun bursts though and the shades go on. A helicopter swoops in low from the sea towards the court looking as if it will crash through the five Olympic rings as Switzerland begin their surge back into the match. They draw level 21-16 sending the Aussies into what will prove to be fatal self doubt.

It’s an endurance game between the players running in the draining, deep sand and having to constantly pick themselves up. The first two games last 22 minutes each. By the third game all four players are glistening, slumping into the shaded sun longer at every timeout opportunity.

Miraculous Flexibility

Switzerland, ranked 12 in the world with

Brazil

filling the top two places in the rankings, slowly put the squeeze on the marginally taller Australians, their shoulders and elbows reddening in the plunging saves and blocks, their arching backs as they dive full out showing miraculous flexibility in keeping the ball from touching the ground.

There is an image that women’s beach volleyball has both deliberately created and mercilessly exploits and here on the Copacabana they do it shamelessly.

It is that point where sport meets entertainment and glamour, where the players’ obvious fitness and skills are evident but where they are also selling their shape and how they look in the least amount of clothes they can possibly wear.

It is a striking element of the sport and anyone with a passing interest in tennis knows that Maria Sharapova, before she was suspended for failing a drugs test, was the highest paid female athlete in the world while being far from the best tennis player.

In the match that succeeds the women, Spain faced Qatar in the men’s event. All four on court wore shorts to their knees and sleeveless shirts. They could have been the dudes walking down the strip but without the bandana. The arena was entirely Speedo free.

As the match unfolds Switzerland tighten their grip, a few missed long drives from Australia falling outside the tape. A couple of critical points at 16-all and the Europeans turn it their way winning 21-19 for the match. They hug, high-five, wave to the crowd and leave the arena to the dancers, the microphone terrorist and the helicopter still buzzing the coastline among the frigatebirds and vultures.