|
|
|
Fun in the SunA venerable American champ was among those who won on the sand as a new Olympic sport gave fans a good old timeby Michael Farber
When the Olympics needed to get away from it all, they took a beach
vacation. Twenty miles south of Olympic Stadium, at a man-made beach as
appealing and artificial as the sport itself, the Olympics found an
oasis in beach volleyball. Even the gold medal ceremony honoring the
legendary Karch Kiraly and his partner, Kent Steffes, seemed more
festive than self-consciously important as His Excellent Dudeness, Juan
Antonio Samaranch, showed up in lenses that were tinted (even if they
weren't Killer Loops). If Samaranch had only ditched his black brogues,
who knows, maybe he would be pushing for bungee jumping at the 2000
Games in Sydney. Sand between the toes can be marvelously therapeutic.
McPeak (left) sent hand signals behind her back to Reno,
which was about the only way they communicated.
photograph by
The inaugural Olympic beach volleyball tournament offered a little bit
of everything: from 15 SPF sunscreen to 16-ounce beers, which allowed
fans who fled the city to get oiled or to get oiled; from the Brazilian
silver medal team of Monica and Adriana, which was on a first-name basis
with the world, to a U.S. women's team whose partners were effectively
on a last-name basis with each other.
The second-best thing about the competition was that the four women
finalists were all girls from Ipanema, while the four men's finalists
were all beachboys from Southern California, the two places on earth
that most cherish this confection of a game. The best thing was that the
players don't have shoe contracts.
Not that there wasn't a dress code at Atlanta Beach. Everyone was
expected to show at least a little skin, something the Secret Service
man accompanying the totally cool Chelsea Clinton on the opening day
obviously forgot. Sir, if you insist on wearing a brown glen plaid
sports coat to the Olympics, you might as well hang out at fencing.
And take a peek at Holly McPeak of the U.S., who was asked about the
breast enlargement she had done early this year. (So far the subject of
breast enlargement has not come up at kayaking, softball or any other
Olympic competition.) This was not just a prurient query. The issue
seemed noteworthy because the procedure had been rumored to be a source
of friction between McPeak and her partner, Nancy Reno. The iconoclastic
Reno, a Mother Jones-type who once wound up in hot water while playing
for the U.S. national indoor team when she drew a peace symbol on her
water bottle, said last week that the surgery was never an issue,
although she noted that the sport was trying to get away "from the T & A
image." However as McPeak's business partner, Reno thought McPeak should
have informed her ahead of time. The pair had split up and reunited
twice since last October—partner swapping is so rife in beach
volleyball that it seems like the suburbs in the 1970s—but the
timing of their separations, with Atlanta looming, was troublesome. When
asked about their relationship before the start of the tournament, Reno
assured everyone that things were swell and added, "That story is as old
as O.J." Well, the Juice didn't convince absolutely everyone either.
Moments after being put out of the double-elimination event by fellow
Americans Linda Hanley and Barbra Fontana Harris, McPeak said she and
Reno would play with other partners on the pro tour. And have a nice
life.
Women's gold medalists Jackie Silva and Sandra Pires, the irrepressible
Brazilians, scored a victory for constancy. Legend has it that Silva, a
34-year-old two-time Olympian in indoor volleyball and one of the best
setters to play the game indoors or out, discovered her partner one day
on a Rio de Janeiro beach, as if Pires, now 23, were Lana Turner and
Ipanema were Schwab's Drugstore. Actually Silva found Pires through the
Brazilian volleyball federation and has nurtured her for three years,
through good times and bad, with the Olympics in mind. Silva says that
when they played in the final of the world championship in Rio in
February, they didn't even speak on the court. "The whole country was
telling us to please stop fighting," Silva said. "They were writing
articles about how we should be talking to each other. She has all the
answers. She says what she wants, and it makes me mad. But I was the one
who had to go to her. I said, 'Sandra, please talk to me. Even if you
have to fake it.'"
There was nothing contrived about their 12-11, 12-6 victory in
Saturday's final over countrywomen Adriana and Monica, who go by their
first names. (The gold and silver awarded to the two teams were the
first Olympic medals ever won by Brazilian women.) The frenetic Silva
dug shots out of the trucked-in sand while her yellow-shirted countrymen
in the stands rollicked as if this were Carnival. Beach volleyball, more
a game of angles and guile than raw power because sand robs players of
about a foot of vertical jump, seems ideally suited to the Brazilian
sense of playfulness.
Silva (1), with partner Pires, got gold, and Monica and Adriana silver,
the first medals ever for Brazil's women.
photograph by
"The swing," Silva answered when asked why Brazilian women take so
naturally to the beach game. You mean the arm swing on a spike? "No, the
swing," she said, swiveling her hips samba-style.
Things were a little more businesslike on the men's side. Kiraly became
the first three-time gold medalist in Olympic volleyball history on
Sunday as he and Steffes, the most dynamic player in the tournament,
performed impeccably in a 12-5, 12-8 victory over Mike Dodd and Mike
Whitmarsh, also of the U.S. For Kiraly, who quit the national indoor
team in 1989, the beach has been not merely a chance to earn a healthy
living—he has won more than $2 million in prize money—but also
an opportunity to return to his roots. Before he became a national hero
as an outside hitter in the Los Angeles Olympics, he already was on his
way to cult status as a king of the beach. Kiraly played his first beach
tournament at Corona del Mar, Calif., in '72, when he was 11. He and his
father, Las, a freedom fighter who stared down Soviet tanks in Hungary
in '56, made quite a pair on the sand. You could win neat trophies and
T-shirts then. In the mid-'70s you could even begin making a little
money at it.
In its thumbnail history of the beach game, USA Volleyball lists the
important occurrences in the sport's development. The sponsorships by
Jose Cuervo and Miller Brewing Company and the first telecasts on NBC
are all red-letter events, the marriage of sponsorship dollars and
exposure that the beach game needed to grow. The five-ring seal of
approval was the final step; the decision by the IOC to let beach rats
like Kiraly and Steffes track sand all over its carpets surely owed
something to the fact that NBC owns the rights to televise both the
beach volleyball tour and the next three Summer Olympics.
"There's definitely a clash of cultures, of image, with the Olympics,"
Kiraly says. "Ours is a lifestyle sport. You hope you don't lose touch
with what the game used to be like, and we have to walk a fine line
between the growth of our sport and maintaining a tie with our
tradition. My dad has a classic Super 8 home movie of a tournament in
Santa Barbara. The referee's on a ladder, drinking a beer, and my dad
scans the beach and then comes back to the referee, except the ref and
the A-frame ladder have come tumbling down. Even less than 10 years ago,
if you lost, you had to ref the next game."
With his victory on the sand, Kiraly cemented his standing
as the best Olympic volleyball player ever.
photograph by
Kiraly and Steffes's march through the field was mostly Shermanesque,
although the two of them did nearly get upended in a quarterfinal match
against Sinjin Smith, the 39-year-old beach legend, and his partner,
Carl Henkel. This was the most widely anticipated match of the
tournament, in large measure because of a political clash between Kiraly
and Smith, onetime partners. (If there's one thing the Olympics tell us,
it's that the more obscure the sport is, the more rabid the politics
are.) In brief, Smith's team received an automatic Olympic berth because
it played on the tour of the International Federation of Volleyball
(FIVB), the sport's sanctioning body, while Kiraly, who remained loyal
to the domestic Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) tour, had
to go through the Olympic trials to get to Atlanta. In a riveting
my-alphabet-can-beat-your-alphabet match, Kiraly and Steffes prevailed
17-15. Kiraly said before the Olympics that Smith and Henkel weren't
among the top eight American pairs but graciously recanted after his
narrow escape.
The final against Dodd and Whitmarsh, fellow AVP members, was both
collegial and surgical. Early in the first set Steffes and Kiraly
figured out ways to circumvent the 6'7" Whitmarsh's blocks at the net
and started cruising. They dug out a generous number of balls, rarely
squandered chances for points and invented shots, including a 50-foot
backward bump by Steffes that landed on top of the net and trickled over
for a point. After Steffes ended the match with a stuff block, the four
players hugged. "I'm very happy for Karch and Kent," Whitmarsh said
later. "They've been the dominant team for four or five years. If you
lose, you want to lose to the best. Besides, Karch Kiraly has done more
for volleyball than anyone I know."
Take beach volleyball away from Atlanta or Sydney in 2000 and put it in
a nation with less of a beach culture, and a game that is inseparable
from its ambience might be diminished, a carny booth at an otherwise
august five-ringed circus. "But at least they gave us a chance to prove
whether we're boring," Kiraly said. The six days of raucous cheers, fun
in the sun (and occasional rain) and the medals from the Boss himself
were pretty much QED to that problem.
No, Atlanta loved its respite from the Serious Games, and the only
people who should worry are those Olympic volleyball players who don't
need sunblock.
Indoor volleyball, which never again will be known as real volleyball,
is going to have to find some flourishes of its own to keep pace with
the upstart California game.
Any suggestions to tart up the indoor game, Karch? "I'd truck in some
sand, open the roof, get rid of four players and have the other two take
off their shirts."
|
