Craig Lord
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The women's beach volleyball final. Entertaining, amusing, spectacular? Certainly. On a par with Owens, Nurmi, Fraser, Beamon, Spitz, Gould, Comeneci, Lewis...? Certainly not. The Games at their best transcend the normal human experience. Australia’s thrilling and close defeat of Brazil, the defending champions, by two sets to nil in a roller-coaster of a clash, did not.
This was pure circus, where the warm-up act became part of the Games show as the man on the microphone dashed to and fro whipping the 10,000-strong capacity crowd into a frenzy between points. Which other sport do you know where every move is matched with ten seconds of disco deafness, where Dawn Fraser, a legend here, is handed the microphone at a crucial point in an Olympic final to lead a cheer of Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi, where Michael Knight, the head of the Games organising committee, joins the parochial prance, and where bikinis are obligatory - but just for the women?
Pity the Brazilians Adriana Behar and Shelda Bede. Bronze medal-winners of 1996, Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst, who set a record serve speed of 85kmph in the match, were just one part of the battle. No chance to gain advantage was lost on the Australians running the show. The Brazilians bugled each time their best-bottomed girl, Adriana Behar, was about to serve.
“She’d only get the silver, mate,” shouted a surfer as he waved Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, the unofficial cuddly mascot of the Games that Olympic chiefs have asked Channel 7 television not to thrust into the hands of Australians as they head for medal ceremonies.
It was a match that to-ed and fro-ed with the rapidity of waves on the beach beyond and took just under an hour and 20 minutes to conclude 12-11, 12-10. If the players weren’t hugging each other and slapping each other’s bottoms, then the commentator was urging the crowd to get better acquainted by massaging the back of the person in front: “Come on now, don’t be shy - that might be your future partner.”
Perhaps he had a hand in the music too. After Freddie Mercury belted out “You’ve got a smile on your face, you big disgrace,” came INXS's Suicide Blonde and Staying Alive from the Bee Gees. There is only one news item on the agenda in Olympic city, the rest of the world a universe away.
Madonna’s Material Girl was more appropriate given the career earnings of the top two teams, just shy of $1 million for the world champions from Brazil and $400,000 for the Australian pair and the second-best Brazilians Adriana Samuel and Sandra Pires, who beat Japan’s Yukiko Takahashi and Mika Saiki for the bronze medal. The Queens of the Beach are big business and the big-brand merchandisers were everywhere yesterday looking for ways to put flesh on their profits.
The finish was thrilling. At 78 minutes, the Australians drew level 10-10 in the second set. A bad serve from Bede and the Australians took back possession. The foot-stomping might have been heard in Brisbane as the hosts went 11-10 up. One more serve and Behar punched the ball long. Pottharst and Cook collapsed to the sand.
Cook grabbed the television microphone and directed the cameraman: “Thanks for this wonderful sport and belief in this sport. I think we’ve put on a wonderful show.” She would place her medal in the goldfish bowl she had bought for the purpose. Rapturous applause.
Beach volleyball is here to stay. But what next? Beach cricket, sand-castle building, a sport for which world titles are already fought for? Or perhaps the game we played on the beach in our youth, flicking bottle tops round a track sifted out in the sand. Great fun. But keep it to yourself. The thought of all those bottle tops emblazoned with the big brand names could be too tempting for Juan and Co to resist.
Craig Lord
The Times
