Bikini-Clad Dancers? It’s All Fun ‘n’ Games

In a move that wouldn’t have played here 2,800 years ago, the Athens Olympic organizing committee tried to ban the local sale of the latest edition of Playboy, which has a “Women of the Olympics” section featuring photos of nude female athletes running, throwing the discus and carrying the Olympic torch.

Undeterred, Playboy’s target audience went out and bought tickets for beach volleyball.

As organizing committee officials discovered the difficult way, these are the Games of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, and they won’t be stopped. The request to have Playboy removed from Greek newsstands was rejected by a local judge, despite the organizing committee’s objections to such headlines as “2004 Seconds of Pleasure” and “Go for a Sexathlon Gold.”

In fact, on Friday, one day after the judge’s ruling, the magazine was sold out in central Athens.

Rock ‘n’ roll, of course, can be found at a variety of Olympic venues, most noticeably at beach volleyball, where rock ‘n’ roll is an integral part of the competition. I believe Van Halen and Fatboy Slim are top-seeded in the men’s division, with Joan Jett and Tina Turner looking strong in the women’s field.

This is how it works:

Players play for a few seconds, the Monkees play for a few seconds, players play for a few seconds, the Beastie Boys play for a few seconds, players play for a few seconds, U2 plays for a few seconds, the players play for a few seconds, then the DJ slips in a changeup, like something from “Zorba the Greek,” and some startled player invariably hits the ball into the net and that team loses.

Drugs? Do you even need to ask?

If you do, all I will say is this: The Olympic track and field competition got fully underway Friday.

Sex? Well, Carl Lewis has booked the Dora Stratou Theater near the Acropolis on Sunday to give a speech promoting sexual abstinence, but if you do much magazine research about Olympic athletes competing here -- and it’s part of the job; it has to be done -- he looks to be fighting a losing battle.

U.S. high jumper Amy Acuff is on the cover of the new Playboy and is compiling an Olympic diary for Playboy’s website. To quote one of the steamier excerpts:

“I would like to take this opportunity to enlighten people a little bit about the high jump. I run a 10-step approach to the bar where I then convert all of my horizontal running speed into vertical lift. My best jump is 6’7”. The technique that all of the modern high jumpers use is called the Fosbury Flop. This involves going over the bar in an arched position, facing the

sky.... “

Next to this text is an ad for the new Playboy, which promises photos.

Acuff also appears in the September edition of FHM, pictured along with swimmers Amanda Beard and Haley Cope, all clad in not very much at all, which frankly raised some eyebrows in the U.S. track and field and swimming communities.

This is probably because the U.S. track and field and swimming communities don’t get out much.

Or at least they don’t get out to beach volleyball.

You’ve probably seen the beach volleyball on television. And the beach volleyball dancers, dressed in their tangerine bikinis. And you’ll probably see more.

Michael Phelps is done, the pixies are winding down, but NBC still needs ratings, so its cameras have hit the beach.

Beach volleyball officials here have gone to great lengths to give athletes and spectators the best possible experience. The sand has been imported from Holland. The guy who oversaw the construction of the stands was imported from Australia. The beach volleyball dancers have been imported from the Canary Islands.

This raises an obvious question:

Beach sand imported from Holland?

There wasn’t enough of the stuff in Greece, with its 9,300 miles of coastline and 1,400 islands?

Holland is renowned for tulips and turnovers and soccer players who can’t make penalty kicks, but not sand. For one, there isn’t much of it in Holland. But evidently that’s part of its appeal. It’s rare, so it must be very good.

Beach volleyball dancers from the Canary Islands make more sense. They made their debut on the European beach volleyball circuit, making memorable appearances in France and Austria. As the Greek Olympics approached, officials at FIVB, volleyball’s international governing body, decided they had to play in Athens too.

According to Angelo Squeo, FIVB beach volleyball coordinator, “the feedback we are getting here about the dancers is very positive. When we send them to rest in the morning, the spectators complain here. They say, ‘We come to enjoy the dancers. So why are you not providing the dancers to us this morning?’

“Well, we cannot keep them here 18 hours a day. Already, we’ve got two injuries.”

Two beach volleyball dancers on the disabled list?

One, Squeo said, “is in the hospital now, because she sprained her ankle. She wanted to dance, so she did and it got worse. So now we are treating them like the players. There is a doctor following them.”

They have become the stars of the show, but U.S. beach volleyball player Stein Metzger doesn’t seem to mind.

“You know, you’ve got to love the beach volleyball atmosphere,” Metzger said with a grin. “This is a lifestyle sport. If you want to come and enjoy and relax in kind of a party atmosphere at the beach, you can’t beat beach volleyball.

“I’m just happy I picked this sport growing up. It’s a good life.”