BeachVolleyball

It was during the 1930s that a novelty imported from California, in the United States, began to become a craze on the sands of Copacabana. Already in the following decade, the first amateur tournaments proliferated on the beaches of Rio, bringing together both weekend athletes and sportsmen who were already stars in indoor volleyball. The possible gap in skill level wasn't exactly an obstacle: most people gathered around the net to have fun, not to compete. Even though there were indeed prizes to be handed out: besides the classic trophies and medals, the rewards included balls, swimsuits, and shoes.

Between the 1940s and 1950s, the “Jornal dos Sports” — a sports periodical founded in 1931 — played an important role in consolidating the sport, organizing a series of tournaments. Most of the matches were held on the seafront of the Zona Sul, but the sands of Ilha do Governador and Ramos also hosted games featuring men's and mixed teams.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white newspaper, dated 1946. It is open to a page of the "Jornal dos Sports," issue number 5298, page 9. The spatial layout runs from left to right, from foreground to background. At the top, there is a headline announcing registration for the "I Beach Volleyball Tournament." Below, there is text explaining the details of the tournament, including the rules and entry fees. On the left, there is an advertisement for a cigarette product, and on the right, an advertisement for an individual radio of the "Emerson" brand. In the center, there is a photo of a man wearing a soccer jersey with the number 27.

The most popular nets were those at Leme, Santa Clara, Bolívar, and Posto 6, in Copacabana; and Montenegro (now Rua Vinícius de Morais) and Aníbal de Mendonça, in Ipanema. In general, teams were made up of sextets, and later came quartets and pairs. There were no women's teams, but many women played on mixed teams.

One of them is among the pioneers of the sport in Rio and in Brazil: Tia Leah. Born in 1919, she was already known in the 1930s for playing beach volleyball near Posto 6. Tia Leah passed away in 2012, at 93 years old — until she was 70, she kept practicing the sport, on those same sands of Posto 6. This stretch of beach, by the way, has quite a history: many celebrated names of indoor and beach volleyball also passed through Posto 6, such as Badalhoca, Bernardinho, Adriana Behar, and Jackie Silva.

In the same Copacabana, Seu Thomás, Frazão, and Bebê Barreto also became well-known names among practitioners of the sport. The Bebê Barreto team, for example, was champion of the first “Jornal dos Sports”, tournament, in 1947.

Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of a group of men on a beach. In the upper part of the image, six men are standing, all shirtless and wearing short shorts. They are arranged in two rows, with three in front and three behind. In the lower part of the image, five other men are sitting on the ground, also shirtless and wearing short shorts. Everyone appears to be smiling at the camera. In the background, there are buildings and a beach stall.

Another important figure in the history of sport in Rio de Janeiro is Seu Nonô, a fisherman since 1937. He, who already sewed his own fishing net, started manufacturing volleyball nets in the 1960s. From the beaches of Rio, the fisherman went on to supply nets for the biggest national competition of the sport, the Circuito Brasileiro Open.

Starting in 1986, the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation (CBV), responsible for indoor volleyball, also began managing beach volleyball, and subsequently the International Federation decided to institutionalize it as a sport.

In the 1980s, Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos, the American "kings of the beach," came to compete and train in Rio. They played at the net near Clube Marimbás, in Copacabana, where they ended up passing on their experience and knowledge about American championships and rules to the cariocas. The professionalization of the sport gradually expanded, and beach volleyball gained more and more visibility.

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, players from Rio made history. Cariocas Sandra Pires and Jackie Silva starred in an all-green-and-yellow final against Monica Rodrigues (a carioca) and Adriana Samuel (from Resende, in Rio de Janeiro state). This way, Brazil and Rio brought home the gold and silver medals in the debut of beach volleyball as an Olympic sport. And cariocas Sandra and Jackie won Brazilian women's sport's first-ever gold medal.

Four years later, in Sydney, the cariocas kept up the good work and dominated the podium. Adriana Behar and Shelda Bedê (from Ceará) took silver; while bronze went to the homegrown duo Adriana Samuel and Sandra Pires. In 2004, it was the men's duos' turn to bring home gold medals for Brazil: Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego, in Athens.

At the Rio Olympics, another celebration: Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt took the gold medal, and Ágatha and Bárbara Seixas (a carioca) the silver, on the sands of that same Copacabana where beach volleyball was born and grew. The Olympic Arena, set up in front of Rua Princesa Isabel, stood 21 meters tall – equivalent to a seven-story building –, covered 62 thousand square meters, and had a capacity for 12 thousand people. The venue was the stage for some of the most exciting and historic moments in this team sport, which, up to 2024, had won the greatest number of Olympic medals for Brazil (14), making the country the biggest champion of this event at the Games.

This text was prepared with the collaboration of Ronaldo Oliveira (Rony Show), a beach volleyball coach (he was assistant coach to Sandra and Jackie in 1996) and a former Fluminense volleyball player.