History of volleyball

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[edit] History of Volleyball

[edit] Origins

Volleyball was for the first time played in the Olympic Games in 1927, as part of an American sports demonstration event. Consideration of its addition to the Olympic programme, however, was given only after World War II, with the foundation of the FIVB and of some of the continental confederations. In 1957, a special tournament was held at the 53rd IOC session in Sofia, Bulgaria to support such request. The competition was a success, and the sport was officially introduced in 1964. The expression "Volleyball Olympic Tournament" is actually misleading. Properly speaking, volleyball events in the Olympic Games are not limited to indoor volleyball, but also include beach volleyball. Nevertheless, the usage had already been consolidated by the time this sport was added to the Olympic programme (1996). To avoid confusion, beach volleyball events are often referred to as the "Beach Volleyball Olympic Tournament". The Volleyball Olympic Tournament was originally a simple competition, whose format paralleled the one still employed in the World Cup: all teams played against each other team and then were ranked by wins, set average and point average. One disadvantage of this round-robin system is that medal winners could be determined before the end of the games, making the audience lose interest in the outcome of the remaining matches. To cope with this situation, the competition was split into two phases: a "final round" was introduced, consisting of quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. Since its creation in 1972, this new system has become the standard for the Volleyball Olympic Tournament, and is usually referred to as the "Olympic format". The number of teams involved in the games has grown steadily since 1964. Since 1996, both men's and women's events count 12 participant nations. Each of the five continental volleyball confederations has at least one affiliated national federation involved in the Olympic Games.

[edit] Men's Indoor Volleyball Olympic Tournament

The first two editions of the Volleyball Olympic Tournament were won by the U.S.S.R.. Third in 1964 and runner-up in 1968, Japan finally made it to the gold in 1972. In 1976, the introduction of a new offensive skill, the backrow attack, allowed Poland to win the competition over the Soviets in a very tight five-setter. Since, in 1980, the strongest teams in men's volleyball belonged to the Eastern Bloc, the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics did not have as great an effect on these events as it had on the women's. The U.S.S.R. collected their third Olympic Gold Medal with a 3-1 victory over Bulgaria. With a now U.S.S.R.-led boycott in 1984, U.S.A. confirmed their new volleyball leadership in the Western World by sweeping smoothly over underranked Brazil at the finals. In that edition a minor nation, Italy, won its first medal, but still it had to wait some years to rise to prominence in volleyball world. The final confrontation between the western and eastern volleyball leaders came in 1988: powerplayers Karch Kiraly and Steve Timmons pushed the U.S.A. to a second gold medal setting the issue in favor of the Americans. In 1992, an underranked Brazil upset all-time favorites C.I.S., Netherlands and mainly Italy for a first Olympic Championship. Runner-ups, Ron Zwerver and Olof van der Meulen's Netherlands came back in the following edition for a thrilling five-set win, again over Italy. In spite in their almost whole rule in all other competitions, a sort of curse seem to struck Italians volleyball players at the Olympics. Bronze in 1996, Vladimir and Nikola Grbic's Serbia and Montenegro (in 1996 and 2000 played under the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) beat Russia at the finals in 2000 to secure the Gold. In 2004, Brazil did not disappoint its fans beating mercilessly Italy in the final, adding a second Gold Medal to its record and confirming its role of greatest superpower of 2000s. Gold Medals seem more evenly distributed in men's volleyball than in women's: former U.S.S.R. has three; U.S.A. and Brazil, two; the remaining four editions of the Volleyball Olympic Tournament were won each by a different country. The remaining main major force, Italy, is runner-up to U.S.S.R. as total number of medals, but still lacks a gold medal.