A STAND-off is looming over just who wears the bikinis at the Olympic beach volleyball competition in Athens. It's already a sport where the scoreline sometimes takes second place to interest in how little the players are wearing. But now the players have voiced concerns over the antics and the dress of a troupe of a dozen dancers that entertains the Athens crowd between matches. "I feel it's kind of disrespectful to the players to have other girls in bikinis out there dancing," said Australia's Nicole Sanderson after her opening match today. "I'm sure some of the male spectators like it, but I'm not so sure about the players."
| The way I look at it, you can never have too many scantily clad maidens... |
| Somebody buy Nicole a drink Er, several drinks, she's Australian |
Sanderson and Sydney gold medallist Natalie Cook, the fifth seeds, won the match against the Bulgarian sisters Linda and Petia Yanchulova 21-16 21-12. Cook's partner from the Sydney Games, Kerri Pottharst, earlier won her opener with new partner Summer Lochowicz, beating Tian Jia and Wang Fei of China 21-18 21-18. Both Sanderson and Cook suggested that one solution to the dancers, whose orange bikinis and exotic manoeuvres have attracted almost as much attention as the volleyball, might be to slip in a couple of male dancers. "If it's equal, then it's fine," Sanderson said.
| Not as interesting, but fine... |
| Just have the wimmin dancers at the end where I'm sitting, 'k? |
Beach volleyball debuted as an Olympic sport in Atlanta in 1996 and attracted such a devoted following that it became the fifth most watched event in Sydney four years ago.
| You don't think it had anything to do with the amount of skin displayed, do you? |
Australia is again one of the favourites to win the gold medal in Athens, but its chances dipped even before play began in the Cook-Sanderson match. Cook walked onto the court with her right shoulder heavily strapped after she suffered rotator cuff tear earlier in the week. She said the injury hadn't prevented her from showing too much skin hindered her too much today and she was confident it would survive the seven matches required to win a second gold medal. "I think I've got another six matches in me," Cook said. "I've been icing it and doing what I can to get me through." But in beach volleyball, there are other forms of assistance to help the players through. The most obvious is the relentless music that blasts out between points. The scoreline in today's Cook-Sanderson match meant that snippets of 70 different tunes got an airing. During one time-out in today's second set the resident DJ played the Rolf Harris standard Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport - which did nothing to inspire the Bulgarians. In the last match of the first day's program, Australians Mark Williams and Julian Prosser beat Americans Dain Blanton and Jeff Nygaard 21-16, 21-14. |