Amanda Smith: Today, sport, sex, ritual and tradition - with beach volleyball, dragon boat racing, and croquet.

Gwenda: Croquet's quite a spiteful game. You don't spare your friends if you're playing opposite them and they're ready to make a hoop and you happen to be able to shoot their ball away, you do. You don't just be polite to your opponents. It's quite a nasty game in many ways.

Amanda Smith: And more on the nice and the nasty side of croquet later in the program. Hi, I'm Amanda Smith. Also coming up on The Sports Factor: me and 22 strapping lads out on the river for dragon boat racing - an ancient Chinese sport that's spreading round the world.

Before that though, beach volleyball - the Baywatch of Olympic Sports - the sport that's put sex appeal right up front as a way to hook in spectators; with all those sun-tanned competitors in skimpy bathers flinging themselves across the sand.

Now while beach volleyball really only came to our attention last year, when it was contested for the first time at the Atlanta Olympics, its origins go back to the beaches of California in the '20s. Which is when it also became the favourite sport of French nudist camps. These days, the beaches of Rio de Janiero are the major site for the sport, with champion volleyballers now rivalling Brazilian soccer players as national heroes. And it was Brazilian women who took out the Gold and Silver medals in Atlanta last year, with Australia getting the bronze.

All three Olympic medal teams are in Melbourne this week, competing in the Women's World Beach Volleyball Open. It's being held not on the beach, but at the National Tennis Centre, where they've poured 1200 tonnes of sand onto Show Court One. One of the Australian Olympic Bronze medal pair is Kerri Pottharst, who made the transition from indoor to beach volleyball five years ago.

ACTUALITY - MATCH IN PROGRESS

Kerri Pottharst: Well it's played pretty on much the same sized court, exactly the same sized court, the same height net for both men and women (obviously the men's is a little bit higher). But there's only two people to cover the whole court, in indoor volleyball we have six people covering the court. And of course you're running around in sand, which can sometimes be like six inches deep, or it can be a couple of inches deep, it depends on the location that we're playing in. So it's very, very difficult. I think it's a lot more physically demanding than indoor volleyball. And tactically it's obviously different too, because you're having to try and put the ball on the sand with only two people instead of six people, so you're playing a different game in that respect. But the skills are all the same, so you find most beach volleyball players have come from a good indoor background, and then they come out and they learn the beach game.

Amanda Smith: So why the shift from six players to two players from indoor to beach volleyball?

Kerri Pottharst: I think beach volleyball started back in the States, it must have been 60, 70 years ago now, and it I think it was started up in the YMCAs or something like that, where they only had a few people to play the sport and so they thought they'd try something different and they put it out on the sand, and it's just become so popular. I think two-a-side is very exciting, it's a bit like doubles tennis, you get a bit of a personality going between teams, and it's exciting. I love it - it's much better only having yourself and another person on the court instead of five other people. I go and play indoor sometimes - I haven't for a while, but when I do - it's just like 'Oh, there's too many people on this court! Go away, that's my ball!'

Amanda Smith: Australia of course prides itself on having a great beach culture, but beach volleyball is relatively new in Australia and it's not yet what you could call a mainstream sport. Most of us I think were seeing it for the first time on telly during the Atlanta Olympics. How do you see the sport developing in Australia?

Kerri Pottharst: I think with, as you said, the beach culture that Australia has got, it's totally in tune with what we've got here in Australia. I mean we have beautiful beaches, we have ready-made crowds on the beaches lying around - and people get bored sometimes sitting around and just - you know, they're wanting to get a suntan, or they're wanting to relax, and to sit and be able to do that and watch beach volleyball played at its highest level is really exciting. And I think that over the next few years, as we get closer to the year 2000, the Olympics in Sydney, that beach volleyball's just going to boom. I mean we're going to try very hard to make it boom. Our medal in Atlanta obviously gave us a great springboard, and I think if the sponsors get involved over the next few years, that'll help increase prizemoney and help make it attractive for people to play the sport, and our level is just going to continue to rise in the world, and we're going to see more and more people going out there, winning world championships.

ACTUALITY - Commentary/score

Amanda Smith: Now what about the sexy image of beach volleyball - what do you think about that?

Kerri Pottharst: Well leading up to Atlanta, I know that some of the players in Australia and also some of the players overseas, were being used to give the sport a sexy image. And sure, I sort of go along with that.

At the time I wanted to really prove that Natalie and I could perform in our sport, using our skills, rather than having to use something else to attract people to watch us play. And now I think well we've proven that we can perform in our sport, and if we can use that to help us encourage sponsorship and things like that, which obviously helps us to be full-time athletes, which helps us to get our goals which are medals in our sport, then it's a good thing.

But I think sometimes you know, the sorts of bathers and the uniforms that we wear are pretty similar to what the athletics girls wear - you know, running around the tracks and doing high jump and things like that. So it's not really much different, I guess it's just that we're out there on the beach so it's seen as a lot sexier. But yes, I'm not fussed with that, and I go along with that if it gets people to come and watch the sport, great. But I think once they come and watch, then they'll realise how exciting it is to watch too.

Amanda Smith: Has it made you more conscious of your body and how you look when you're competing, compared to when you were playing indoor volleyball?

Kerri Pottharst: I think so, yes. At first it's a bit daunting, especially when we've played our first semi-final in Brazil in front of 15,000 spectators. And I still remember walking out onto the court, and no-one else was out there - we were due to warm up and play in about half an hour. And I went out there early and I actually sort of had to run around on the court, warming up, with 15,000 people with nothing else to look at but me, and I felt very, very self-conscious. But yes, I think it has made us aware of what we're wearing. We try and wear outfits that are obviously exciting to look at too, because it's all part of the sport. You see it in Rugby League now: all the guys are wearing really multicoloured tops and things like that. It just adds to the marketability of the sport I think.

Amanda Smith: Yes, well do you think that more and more sports will start to acknowledge and exploit, in a marketing sense, the spectator sex appeal of their athletes in the kind of very upfront way that beach volleyball has done?

Kerri Pottharst: Yes, I think it's getting harder and harder for sports to get the sponsorship dollar, and I think whatever any sport can do to make their sport more attractive, then they've got to win out because people are going to watch it, you know. If you're looking sort of gaudy and ugly and boring and dirty, or whatever, then no-one's going to want to watch you play your sport. But if you're looking exciting and attractive and the sport's also exciting and attractive, then sure, that's going to attract people to watch.

Amanda Smith: Kerri Pottharst, competing at the Women's World Beach Volleyball Open at the National Tennis Centre this weekend.

And now, let me take you far away from sand and sex appeal, to Wonderland.

Queen: Ah, can you play croquet?

Alice: Yes.

Queen: Ah! Come along then! Do you want to play or don't you? Get to your places! Get to your places!

Alice: But how on earth can we play croquet like this? The ground is all ridges and furrows; the balls are live hedgehogs, and the mallets are live flamingoes! I must say no-one here plays at all fairly. They don't seem to have any rules.

Amanda Smith: The famous croquet game from 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. This week and next, Sydney is hosting the Australian Croquet Championships. Now I suspect for most of us, our knowledge of croquet is limited to Lewis Carroll's weird and wonderful storybook version; or perhaps 19th century English costumes dramas. But what are the actual origins of this game that sounds French?

Peter Tavender is a competitor at these Australian championships, and also the Secretary of 'Croquet Australia':

Peter Tavender: Probably going right back to the Middle Ages, there used to be lots of mallet and ball games. Pall Mall, the street in London, was named after one of the games. But the current game came over from Ireland to England during the middle 1800s, and it was the first game which women could play, which really women could participate in. And so it became very popular, especially with the large country houses and plenty of space.

Amanda Smith: So the game seems to have originated in Ireland, although the name 'croquet' sounds French.

Peter Tavender: It does, and nobody has seemed to have come up with the answer to where that name came from.

Amanda Smith: Oh really, so that's shrouded in the mists of time?

Peter Tavender: Yes, very much so.

Amanda Smith: So tell me about its establishment in England.

Peter Tavender: Well a lot of these country - during the 1850s, 1860s - at a lot of country houses, the game was played. And over time they started to codify the rules, because I imagine up till then everybody had made up their own rules. And then in about the 1880s, they actually established the All England Croquet Club, which is at Wimbledon. It is of course now the All England Tennis and Croquet Club - we've been overtaken by that newfangled game.

Amanda Smith: Right. So the lawns at Wimbledon were originally for croquet, not for tennis - what happened?

Peter Tavender: We got there first, although I think over time tennis started being played and people realised that it was - a lot of people felt it was - a more exciting game. And it just took over from croquet in many areas.

Amanda Smith: When was croquet first played in Australia?

Peter Tavender: Well it seems to have been about the same time. Obviously a lot of migrants coming out from England during the 1800s. We've got a picture of it being played in about 1854, I think it was, at Government House in Perth. And in the 1850s, 1860s one or two clubs started. By the turn of the century we had a lot of clubs around, and we started establishing State associations.

Amanda Smith: Peter Tavender, who's competing at the Australian Croquet Championships, on at the moment in Sydney.

Now while Alice thought the croquet game in 'Wonderland' had no rules, the real competitive game has lots of them. All very well known to referee Shirley Hallinan. I had a chat to Shirley the other day at a doubles game she was refereeing, first to find out about the fundamentals of croquet:

ACTUALITY - GAME IN PROGRESS

Shirley Hallinan: Have you ever played snooker?

Amanda Smith: A little bit, yes.

Shirley Hallinan: Well it's very much like snooker on grass. It's exactly the same. If you like to think of a snooker table, there are four corner pockets and two side pockets, so that there are six pockets. Now our hoops don't exactly equate to the same position on what you would call a big lawn table, but nevertheless it's the same principle. We have six hoops, a billiard table or a snooker table, has six pockets, and that's what you're trying to do. And we have angles - you make a hoop and you earn an extra shot, and in that extra shot if you hit (or roquet) another ball, you earn two extra shots. The first of which is the croquet stroke, which means you pick up your ball and put it in contact with the ball that you hit, and you do a stroke where both balls must move.

Amanda Smith: So you actually get breaks as in snooker?

Shirley Hallinan: Exactly, exactly. And if you are watching this game, you'll find that there's a lady on the lawn in front of us playing with the red ball. But she will keep on playing with that red ball, and nobody else is on the lawn. So as she makes a hoop, she immediately becomes alive on the other three balls again. And she can go from one to the other by positioning the balls ahead, and that's the important thing: you don't leave balls behind unless you want it left behind. You really try and position the balls along the lawn exactly where they're going to be of most benefit to you.

Amanda Smith: So OK. So as you say, it's sort of like snooker on grass, although of course you can't have a cigarette and a can of beer while you're playing, can you!?

Shirley Hallinan: Well no, you can't. And because we're sponsored by VicHealth, and we have a healthy lifestyle, our clubrooms are smoke-free. But no, you don't sit round with a can of beer, but you can have one after the game!

Amanda Smith: Now you must have to, for this game, have to have a good eye and a good understanding of angles?

Shirley Hallinan: Oh most definitely. You really need a basic understanding of physics. You need to understand exactly where you have to hit a ball. Because you can angle it, you can go not actually in off, but almost; you must know how to cut a ball, and - well there are definite exercises that we do regularly to improve our skills. You've just got to hone them.

Amanda Smith: How difficult is it to get the ball through the hoop? Because the hoop's actually not much wider than the ball itself, is it?

Shirley Hallinan: No it is not. There's about a sixteenth of an inch on either side of the ball. In fact I was here the other day and there was a guy teaching a group of schoolchildren, and he was just explaining to them that perhaps this is the narrowest margin you would ever find in any sport. If you take a football and the size of the goals, there's a huge margin of error. Even in golf, the cup is about three times the size of the ball. Whereas here, we have a sixteenth of an inch, and if we were in Sydney at the moment playing in the National Championships, you would have a 32nd of an inch on either side of the ball.

Amanda Smith: Now in refereeing a game of croquet, what do you have to keep an eye out for? What sort of crimes and misdemeanours do players get up to?

Shirley Hallinan: Well there are lots of crimes and misdemeanours they can get up to! There are 52 laws of croquet, and a lot of those laws have sub-divisions. So that there are quite a few. You might just think it's a quite straightforward game, but it's not. There are lots of things that they can do wrong.

Amanda Smith: Shirley Hallinan.

And another croquet enthusiast is Tony van der Meche, who manufactures and imports the mallets, hoops and balls of the game. In these days of 'image' playing a big role in the success of a sport, Tony's the first to admit that the image of croquet isn't a terribly sexy one, although this wasn't always the case:

Tony van der Meche: At the end of the last century, in the United States where croquet also became very strong. It was the idea to play croquet because it was a mixed game you see, because it's one of the few sports where women and men can play together. And idea was to drive the ball off the court as far as you could into the bushes you see, and you'd follow the girls into the bushes and a bit of canoodling was going on. And at one stage it was - and this was around Boston - it was berated from the pulpit you know, 'This was a very bad thing to do. It could lead to lasciviousness', and all that sort of thing. So it went through a period of time when the wowsers really got control of a game like this, and there was a bit of a decline. Probably because of that, but there are probably more important reasons why the game went into decline, especially as the result of tennis rearing its ugly head.

Amanda Smith: The thing with most sports is, though, that our introduction to them is generally when we're at school. Now I had a go at a lot of sports when I was at school, but never croquet. Is that part of the problem, that most people have no experience of the sport unless they luck in on it later in life?

Tony van der Meche: Yes, I think you put your finger right on it really, and the Croquet Association and Croquet Australia are both aiming at schools. I mean they're saying to themselves, 'Look, you know, we've got to show kids that this is a fantastic game. A lot of fun, challenges and all that sort of thing'. So what we're doing at the moment is running croquet clinics in schools and we've had tremendous success. I mean if you'd seen the kids playing croquet - and I go into schools with a couple of sets of croquet, and I might have up to 35 kids you know, to have to look after at one time with two sets of croquet. You can imagine what that's like. You know, sort of hitting the ball around the barbecue and around the seats, around the school yard and so on. But it's a tremendous amount of fun. You can't tear them away after a while. And of course it's second nature for them to be competitive, and they get very competitive, because of the interaction that takes place between the balls and so on, it's just a classic for them, yes.

Amanda Smith: Well tell me a bit more about the equipment involved, Tony, because unlike the croquet game in Alice in Wonderland, it's not flamingoes and hedgehogs.

Tony van der Meche: Well you know, it's a funny thing. I had a phone call about a year ago from a girl who - she spoke very quietly, and she said - 'Oh, excuse me, do you sell croquet equipment?' And I said, 'Yes, we do.' And she said, 'Do you think you can make croquet mallets that look like flamingoes?' And you know, I mean after falling over and then picking myself up again of course, I said, 'Of course we can, we can do anything for you.' So anyway, she explained to us - to cut a long story short - she explained to us that she had a 21st birthday party and the theme was going to be Alice in Wonderland. It was wonderful. And so we painted up these mallets, you know, with the handle and the head as a flamingo head, and the handle in feathers and all that sort of thing. And she planned to put cards on hoops and she was going to have a wonderful time. Actually going to dress up in blue you know, just like Alice. So it is a bit like that sometimes, but generally speaking of course, it's a bit more serious.

Amanda Smith: Tony van der Meche. And before him, Shirley Hallinan and Peter Tavender - croquet lovers all.

Now it's also dragon boat season in Australia at the moment. Next weekend, the Australian titles are being held in Adelaide. While this weekend the 1997 International Dragon Boat Festival is on as part of the Melbourne's Moomba Festival, hosted by the Victorian Dragon Boat Association.

Trevor Huggard, who's the Secretary of the Association, got involved with dragon boat racing 13 years ago, literally by accident. When he was Lord Mayor of Melbourne, he launched a competition by stepping into a boat in his full Mayoral regalia, and ended up dumping himself, and the boat, into the Yarra River. It's a little bit similar to how the ancient Chinese sport of dragon boat racing began, as Trevor Huggard explains.

Trevor Huggard: Well it's a fascinating story: 2,300 years ago, a much-loved poet, Qu Yuan - he was the first recorded poet in China, in history - and he was much-loved by the people but he was very, very upset by the levels of corruption and the mismanagement of the top. Some might say nothing changes, throughout the world. But he eventually was so depressed by this that he threw himself in the river to commit suicide. And the locals saw this, and took to their fishing boats and paddled, hitting drums and gongs and anything they could to make a noise to frighten off the serpents, so they wouldn't attack his body. Unfortunately they didn't succeed, they were throwing rice dumplings as they were going to sort of keep the serpents away. Unfortunately they didn't succeed, but this tradition of a great deal of pandemonium with drums and chimes and gongs, paddling furiously and slapping the water with the paddles as they go, and as we will see tomorrow, the rice dumpling tradition of throwing these into the water for getting rid of the evil spirits, and for safe paddling, still is enacted today.

So it's a 2,300 year old tradition. We've got a long way to go, with only 13 years under our belt.

Amanda Smith: Now there's quite a bit of ritual around dragon boat racing. For example, the ceremony before a race.

Trevor Huggard: Yes, the Dotting of the Eyes ceremony. Very, very important. The awakening of the dragon, and to do it in the appropriate way so that the dragon is happy, not agitated, or in a cross mood. The Dotting of the Eyes, to open the eyes of the dragon so that the dragon sees and is ready to compete again, is a very important one, conducted at all of the festivals. So we will have a Buddhist monk at the ceremony and the appropriate offerings and then the Dotting of the Eyes. And we usually get various dignitaries, the Premier, the Lord Mayor, to dot the eyes.

Amanda Smith: Well tell me more about the popularity of dragon boat racing in China nowadays, because you were with Australians last year competing in China.

Trevor Huggard: It really is something that I think most Australians don't understand fully. It's a bit like if they were to bring a Chinese football team here, and they were to run out onto the Grand Final stadium and be received as an equal with one of our local teams. It's that kind of adulation. The paddlers are generally amazed when they go there, to find suddenly they're representing their city, their country, in an event where 1.6-million people turn up. We have 100,000 at the MCG on Grand Final day, we say it's a big event. One-point-six-million has to be seen to be believed - they're hanging off every building, out of every tree, they build grandstands along both sides of the river. And they charge to go into this event, so it's not like here, where it's a free event. Very, very big, very important. And to be a member of a competing team over there, these people walk like a Formula One driver or something like that - it is incredible.

So it's important from that point of view, and from the point of view of international relations. And from the point of view of a background to business - a great deal of their business is done there - a bit like on the golf course in Japan, or at the Grand Final at the football here. It's very, very important from a business point of view, and international understanding. And we see a great number of other things develop from this.

Amanda Smith: Well just tell me a bit more about the dragon boat racing in China - the style of racing or competing, and what goes on?

Trevor Huggard: In China, they do have the 22-person or 22-paddler boats, just the same as we do - that's the international standard that's set through the governing body, the world body, in Hong Kong. But they also have the very impressive ceremonial boats with 100 paddlers, and some 15 performers - dancers, gongers, chimers, drummers - it's an amazing spectacle, beautifully dressed, lots of bunting and flags. And they actually have four people dancing on the bow, doing all sorts of acrobatic somersaults and dance routines to make the dragon's head bob. And they are given an award of points for their presentation; they have different styles - windmill style, backhand style, paddling - and they change regularly throughout the event, and so it's not the speed but it's the performance, the grace, the style, the presentation.

Now our events are purely about speed, but we also have judges to judge the presentation of the boats. There is a prize for the best presented boat, and it's notable in the last three years just how much this has lifted, and the pride between corporate teams and visiting teams and local teams, in lifting the presentation. And that makes it very colourful and exciting for the spectators.

Captain: ...And when we race on Sunday, it's no good worrying about the Indonesians or any other crew, because thinking about them doesn't influence their game, right? What we're doing in our boat is completely independent of what they do in their boat...

Amanda Smith: Now that's the Footscray Canoe Club team at training this week, getting their strategies in order for the weekend racing.

One of the other Australian teams competing this weekend is the Chinese Youth Society. They're a mixed squad, and they've been in serious training since December. According to Philbert Chin, who's the captain of the Chinese Youth Society team, it takes a fair while to get the 22 people, in the one boat, to work in unison.

ACTUALITY - DRAGON BOAT RACING Cox: Go!

Philbert Chin: Well we've taken about three months to get the hang of it. Initially we started off with 22 captains, and then we suddenly find out who's not the captain and who are the captains. And then it's mainly just getting the timing right, and once we've got that, then we work on the techniques. And with 22 people it's quite difficult, especially with ten people on either side.

Amanda Smith: Are there tactics involved in racing, or are you basically just trying to go like the clappers over the whole course?

Philbert Chin: Well initially we thought, we'll just go all the way without any tactics. But then I realised after a couple of races against other teams, that it is a bit like chess: you have to position the people on the boat correctly for weight distribution. The correct techniques have to be used, applied in the race, and also you have to know when to increase the rate, decrease the rate, and also when to dig the strokes in, to pace yourself, so you don't run out of stamina by the end of the race.

Amanda Smith: Can you cut across other boats when you're racing?

Philbert Chin: We've tried, and we've been nearly disqualified, last year, so no, you can't. You have to stay within your lanes - otherwise all the other teams can appeal and you may be disqualified from the races.

Amanda Smith: How important is the drummer in dragon boat racing? I ask this because the boat I went out with during a training session this week weren't using a drum. They were a bunch of boys who said they didn't have any rhythm, so didn't use the drum!

Philbert Chin: Traditionally a drum is used to keep time, because you actually try to feel the beat of the boat. But I think nowadays the modern teams find that just concentrating and listening to the water, you get the timing through that. But we still try to keep the tradition. We work both with the drum and the water at the same time, because we find that people at the back of the boat can't really hear the cox screaming the strokes out, so we try to beat the drum and hopefully get the momentum up, and the motivation of the crew to the sounds of the drum.

Amanda Smith: So how important is dragon boat racing to you and the rest of your Chinese Youth Society team as far as your Chinese heritage goes?

Philbert Chin: At our club we've always tried to promote Chinese heritage and culture, whether it's through martial arts, lion dancing or folk dancing. And it was only recently, I think in the past three years, that I sort of got introduced to dragon boating, and I thought this would be a great way, especially for youth that don't want to learn martial arts, and yet they can still learn the Chinese culture. And it's been fantastic because it's been able to bring a lot of different people together who have interest in sports, and in this way it brings a lot of individuals together to work as a team. And not only that, it sort of improves the teamwork and hopefully improves the character as they go into the workforce. So it's been fantastic.

Amanda Smith: So are most of the people in your team Chinese Australians, although mostly born in Australia?

Philbert Chin: Probably half the team are Australian born, and probably the rest could be Malaysians who have lived in Australia for a long time. But we try to choose mainly Asians, because we're trying to attract more Asians into the sport because we find that it's very Anglo Saxon dominated at the moment. So yes, trying to bring it back to the Chinese people.

Amanda Smith: Philbert Chin, captain of the Chinese Youth Society team at this weekend's International Dragon Boat races in Melbourne. And not this weekend, but next, the national titles are on in Adelaide.

And that's The Sports Factor for this week. Do join me, Amanda Smith at 8.30 again next Friday morning.

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The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.00pm).