Beach volleyball in Athens

Actually, an informant reporting from Athens (a senior retired MoD mandarin, now a sports administrator of international repute) told me that “the ladies in the photo are not genuine participants in beach volleyball, but a distraction to take spectators' minds off the dullness of the action. The organisers are so aware of this that they play rock music between points and bring on the dancing girls for each (frequent) time-out. The female athletes were nothing much to write home about, but one enterprising press photographer had set up a tripod near ground level at the end of the playing area so that he could guarantee close-ups of bikini-clad bottoms, which appeared next day in the Greek equivalent of the Daily Sport.”

Hey there, Pierre de Coubertin!