A Sport Played in Bikinis!

A German serve - are pink official German colours?

I was only back in town for a day and I caught Olympic fever. I was talking to Darryl Friday morning and he told me that he and his daughter had got into the Beach Volleyball competition by buying tickets from a scalper at the gate. So I headed off for Friday night's matches to try my luck at cadging a ticket. Little did I know a Chinese team was playing. But after standing around for 40 or 50 minutes a Brazil guy offered me a ticket at a reasonable price and I was in. 400 RMB for a 100 RMB seat.

Beach volleyball is a good sport to watch even if you are not a student of the game. Four tall, fit girls running around in bikinis in the sand batting a ball back and forth. When I was growing up, the only place that kind of action happened was at the Playboy mansion! Who knew? And the matches were quite good too. I saw Germany vs Austria, Cuba vs China, Brazil vs Norway and Germany vs Brazil.

The Chinese team setting up a spike.

The hapless Cubans against the Chinese.

Germany vs. Austria

The venue was close to my apartment in Chaoyang Park, just behind the Canadian School. The stadium itself is a temporary venue put up just for the games, but quite comfortable and seating around 5000. The event itself was full of excitement - blaring rock, gyrating cheerleaders, the Mascots cavorting and beer fueled fans running up and down the aisles with flags streaming behind them. I felt sorry for the Cuban girls; the crowd was definitely pro China and the Cubans went down in 2 straight matches.

A Gogo on the beach - Annette Funicello eat your heart out!

As the sun sets over Beijing...

The crowd and the stadium

Busy volunteers.

Those lovable Mascots - Nini and Jingjing

I will be going to wrestling with Darryl on the 20th and I am going to try to get into the Bird's Nest on the 17th. One World! One Dream! - the Olympic motto for Beijing. Am I the only one that finds that a bit ominous??