There are surely people out there who think that beach volleyball deserves to be taken as seriously as more conventional Olympic sports like basketball and swimming, but few of those people appear to be in London just now.
"I think the women are wearing too much in the top area, actually," said Brent Lewingon, 24, a carpenter who, wrapped in a damp Australian flag after what he described as two sleepless days of nonstop partying, was providing his own commentary at the Germany-Australia preliminary-round match Sunday.
It was a provocative thing to say, only about eight square inches of Lycra stand between the women and nakedness. But a peculiar aspect of the whole enterprise is that in Britain, where people love to talk about women and their lack of clothing, it appears to be perfectly acceptable to discuss this point.
"As I write these words there are seminaked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade," Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, wrote on Monday, listing the things he likes about the Olympics. Johnson, who is married, then described the women as "glistening like wet otters," but that is a separate issue.
Beach volleyball, in which pairs of athletes in beach attire compete on courts made from sand, sometimes in places that usually do not have sand, like the middle of this gritty, gray, rainy city, became an official Olympic sport in 1996. It clearly requires supreme athletic skill and dedication.
{{/usCountry}}Beach volleyball, in which pairs of athletes in beach attire compete on courts made from sand, sometimes in places that usually do not have sand, like the middle of this gritty, gray, rainy city, became an official Olympic sport in 1996. It clearly requires supreme athletic skill and dedication.
{{/usCountry}}The International Volleyball Federation this year lifted its rule mandating that female competitors wear bikinis, allowing them to wear shorts and sleeved tops, but worries that they would completely adopt more modest attire have been unfounded.
Meanwhile, ever alert to fresh opportunities to illustrate news articles with photographs of women's behinds, the British tabloids have found in beach volleyball perhaps their Platonic ideal of an Olympic sport. "Cheeky Girls on Parade!" was the headline in The Daily Mirror.
The Sun, meanwhile, has a "beach volleyball correspondent," Ally Ross, although Ross' job did not get off to a promising start the other day when he eagerly switched on his television. "And what do I find at 2:25 p.m., the appointed time? MEN'S Beach Volleyball," he wrote. "It's like drinking nonalcoholic lager."
To their eternal credit, the players, who are as relaxed and friendly as swimming champions can seem at times chilly and distant, appear unfazed when the questions turn inevitably to their bikinis.