Staid old Horse Guards Parade has been transformed into the ‘best venue ever’, with music, dancers — and some pretty good volleyball, too

The easiest column at any Summer Olympics is the one that makes fun of beach volleyball. It’s gratuitous, petty and mean-spirited, seeking cheap laughs while ignoring the years of hard work and dedication the athletes have put into reaching their sport’s highest level.

So let’s get right to it.

In Monday’s edition of The Daily Telegraph, London mayor Boris Johnson wrote a quite hilarious piece detailing “20 reasons to be cheerful and proud about the way our London 2012 Olympics are going so far.”

No. 19 went like this: “As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalized by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.”

He didn’t mean the sport was a joke. Try to picture running in deepish sand while chasing down a smartly-batted volleyball on a 64-square-metre patch of territory far too large for two people to adequately defend. It’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re wearing a bikini on a cold, windy, rainy night, are glistening like an otter and have goosebumps the size of … wait, those aren’t goosebumps.

No, what Boris was saying was that the juxtaposition of this clearly wacko enterprise and the epicentre of English history is strikingly incongruous. So much fun, in the middle of so much seriousness.

For all kinds of reasons — beginning with the scarcity of civic leaders with a sense of humour, and history that began the day before yesterday compared to the antiquity all about London — this could never happen in Canada.

Peering down at the ersatz beach from the press seating area, Big Ben, sounding the 11 o’clock hour, Parliament and Westminster Abbey are off to the right, the Churchill War Rooms over the right shoulder, Buckingham Palace directly behind, the Old Admiralty building to the left, and the old War Office building and London Eye (across the Thames, but looking very close) ahead.

Within a couple of blocks are 10 Downing Street and Scotland Yard. The elaborate changing of the guard ceremony, which is normally carried out promptly at 11 — not only on foot by the Palace guards but also, on horseback, right on the site of this patch of sand in the middle of a 15,000-seat Meccano set — has been temporarily moved to the other side of the Horse Guards building.

This ancient rite is taking place, then, in stately precision while being serenaded from the beach’s speaker system by AC/DC’s Back in Black, Queen’s We Will Rock You, House of Pain’s Jump Around and — the piece de resistance — Miami Sound Machine’s Conga, the latter accompanied by a troupe of scantily-clad dancers gyrating for the crowd’s enjoyment.

On a warm, sunny Monday, the crowd was enjoying it very much. London 2012 may be suffering an early crisis of unused tickets leaving venues looking half-empty, but beach volleyball is going gangbusters.

Even on the cool, wet days, the female players have staunchly refused to put on the long- sleeved tops or long-suit bottoms, everyone’s all shiny and bronzed and sleek and tattooed just enough to be attractive — (Boris Johnson again: “16. The Olympics are proving to be a boost to tattoo parlours. Plenty of people seem to want their thighs inscribed with ‘Oylimpics 2012’ and other ineradicable misspellings …”) — because, let’s face it, the sport doesn’t exactly hide its sexy under a bushel.

On that score, the Canadian men’s team of Toronto’s Joshua Binstock and Comox, B.C.’s Martin Reader — a 6-7 part-time model — is well up the standings. They’re only 1-1 in matches played so far, though, because Monday they were roundly beaten in straight sets, 21-14, 21-14, by Norway’s Tarjei Skarlund and Martin Spinnangr.

Fortunately, it’s a round-robin, and even if they lose again to Brazil on Wednesday, they could still get through to the next round as a “Lucky Loser.” Of course, they’d have to win a raffle, or something, to be one, but that’s life on the beach.

Still, they weren’t delighted with their effort.

“Not up to our calibre. I didn’t take care of our first touches, and that kind of took away from our second and thirds,” said Binstock. “They’re smart. But our serving didn’t put enough pressure on them.”

The venue, and all the shenanigans within it, weren’t a factor. It’s the way the sport is. The raking crew comes out to smooth the surface a couple of times per match, and the P.A. announcer, who’s got to have leather lungs because he’s “on” all day, leads the crowd in a cheer. The dancers, ditto.

Beach volleyball players travel to all kinds of exotic locales to play — Gstaad, Brasilia, Shanghai, Prague, Moscow, Rome, Berlin — but the Horse Guards Parade is special.

“It’s not as hot as the rest of them, but it’s the best by far,” said Reader. “All the amenities are amazing, sound system, music choice, the energy, and people understand and cheer for the athleticism of the rallies, not just one country.”

“The scale isn’t much different,” Binstock said. “I mean, maybe it’s not 15,000 but Klagenfurt, Austria has 10,000, so you get the feel of that for sure. For sure you have more pride [in the Olympics], friends and family are there, but in terms of motivation, it’s all the same.”

And yes, Reader says, he does listen to the music.

“Oh, yeah, I love electronic music and I know quite a few of the artists they’re playing, so I jam out on the court and get a little bit of energy from it, so I dig it, and the choice of words by the guy on the microphone, I hear that as well.”

The sum of the surrounding distractions from the actual sport — the music, the dancers, the hot bodies, the on-court histrionics — probably makes it harder to take the athletes as seriously as they deserve, though the participants think that bridge has long since been crossed, by the Sinjin Smiths and Misty May-Treanors of the California beaches.

“In the ’90s, guys were making so much money off endorsements and they were very well respected as athletes,” Reader said. “I think people have given the [competition] a little trouble just because we have dancers at the Olympic Games, and don’t take it seriously, but I think people realize how much physical prowess it takes to be out here.”

But they don’t mind the dancers so much, either. Or the surroundings.

“What can I say? It’s the best spot we could have chosen in London,” said Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs. “All the other athletes are jealous. It’s the best [venue] ever.”

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