Where does all this cynicism come from? You ask athletes to play their sport, to do their training. You put the stars of the sport in bikinis and ask them to frolic in the sand because the cameras love it, and everyone is up in arms. Where was the outcry when Mary Jose Perec's running shorts in the Atlanta games appeared to be ever so briefer than all others? Yes, her sponsors loved that too.

Ok, so beach volleyball became the principal activity in a French nudist camp in Franconville, a suburb of Paris in 1927. But the sport originated in California in the early 1920s when families threw up nets on the beach around Santa Monica. Our ignorance of beach volleyball comes not from its pedigree as a serious Olympic sport but because of our climate. If the island of Ireland drifted 300 miles south, we too would be unpacking our sun screen, shades and thongs and wondering what hurling was all about.

For And Against: Beach volleyball

How this game ever got off the beaches of California and into the sacred Olympic circus defies all logic. This is a game for those sun-worshippers who have nothing better to do than compare the glow of their bronzed bodies and think that if all else fails, they can always get a part in Baywatch.

Beach volleyball is great for killing a Saturday afternoon on the Santa Monica surf (or Brittas Bay if you really want to make a fool of yourself), but think how biased it is against places like Mullingar.

Worst of all, the powers that be ignored the pleas of those sensible people on Sydney's Bondi Beach and constructed a monstrous 10,000-seater court which will cause irreparable ecological damage, not to mention ruining the set of Home and Away for a couple of weeks. And for what? To give a bunch of bare-footed, hand-clapping Ivy League exports their day in the sun. Hope it rains like hell on them.

By Ian O'Riordan