ANCIENT ORIGINS

BRAZIL BRINGS COPACABANA CULTURE TO BONDI

There could be few more glamorous venues in the world than Bondi Beach for staging the second Olympic beach volleyball tournament, although many Sydney residents feel otherwise, having witnessed their famous beach being taken over by construction workers in the past year.

It may all be worth it in the end, given that the sport is unique for having a rule that requires its women to compete only in bikinis. In keeping with that cool and sexy image, the sport's terminology reflects the youthfulness of beach volleyball amid the traditional Olympic sports; you will hear much talk of "boom," "lip", "chuck", and "spade", but to mention a few.

The game is a glamorous version of its indoor cousin, which was invented by William Morgan, an American, in the 1890s after he watched basketball but felt it a little too strenuous for an ageing businessman. Morgan named his game "mintonette" but the term volleyball soon took off as the most obvious way of describing a game in which the ball is volleyed over the net.

The beach game, one of the coolest sports in the world, had a cool origin; California in the 1920s. From its popularity in the US, the sport soon spread to nudist French colonies in the early part of the 20th century and from there was a common holiday pastime across continental Europe.

The first official two-man tournament can be traced back to 1947, while California hosted a beach volleyball circuit in the 1950s and the sport became part of youth culture. In the 1960s, the sport was cool enough to attract such distinguished spectators as the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy. Prize-money followed in the 1970s, well ahead of the big Olympic sports such as athletics and swimming, a trend that would have kept the sport out of the Olympic arena before the 1981 removal of the term "amateur" from the Olympic charter.

The sport's international governing body, the Federation Internationale de Volleyball, established a world championship for men, fittingly on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, and a world series followed soon after. Women were granted their own world championship in 1993 in preparation for inclusion in the Atlanta Olympic Games.