In honour of the latest leg of the Beach Volleyball World Tour which touched down in Klagenfurt, Austria, this week, redbull.com has compiled a list of things you need to know...
1. Volleyball has come a long way since the first proper event gave its winners a case of Pepsi in 1948. Right now, the Brazilian duo of Alison Cerutti and Emanuel Rego led the Men’s World Tour rankings with earnings of $283,700. Fellow Brazilians Juliana Felisberta Silva and Larissa Franc lead the women’s tour with $273,700.
2. It’s now so popular that the organisers of the London 2012 Olympics expect 480,000 people to attend the beach volleyball. Games will be played in a three-sided 15,000-capacity stadium in Horse Guards’ Parade with sand transported from glamorous north England. It’s rumoured that prime minister David Cameron can see the court from 10 Downing St.
3. The main Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) was set up in 1947 and is now headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland. They oversee the world game, including the Swatch World Tour 2011, which the Klagenfurt Grand Slam is part of. It’s taking place right now until August 7 and is the sixth and final Grand Slam on the tour.
4 Games of beach volleyball are shorter than their indoor equivalent, with a smaller court and a softer ball. In beach volleyball, a match is won by the team that wins two sets, with the first side to reach 21 points taking the set. In indoor volleyball, it's the first team to score 25 points and the match is a best of five sets.
5. Most of the early beach volleyball matches were played with teams of at least six players per side, much like indoor volleyball. The concept of the modern two-man game, however, is credited to Paul "Pablo" Johnson, an indoor player of Santa Monica Athletic Club. In the summer of 1930, while waiting for players to show up for a six-man game, Johnson decided to try playing with only the four people present. His experiment was a success and now only two players are allowed on the court for each team.
6. The sport obviously favours those countries with a beach-based lifestyle. The first circuit of courts was set up in southern California in the 1950s – but America isn’t top dog. That’ll be Brazil, followed by the US, Germany, China, Australia and Spain. Vassiliki Arvaniti and Maria Tsiartsiani (pictured above), meanwhile, represent Greece.
7. Even after Hawkeye’s ogling of naked volleyball players in M*A*S*H* the sport remained a cult phenomena until the mid-80s when players such as Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos – famed for the enormous one-handed Kong Block – got people excited. The first FIVB World Championships were played in Rio de Janeiro in 1987 and the sport made its Olympic debut at Atlanta in 1996.
8. The sport has seen its fair share of controversy. Organisational bodies have filed for bankruptcy right, left and centre in the US and in 1999 the FIVB made the official uniform a swim-suit. Female players claim it was done just to make the sport sexy.
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