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Volleyball

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Volleyball is one of the fastest and most spectacular sports on the Olympic program and recent rule changes have made it even more so.

Responding to the challenge of its sandy cousin beach volleyball, which was introduced to Olympic competition in Atlanta in 1996, the indoor version of the sport has undergone a number of reforms.

Two of these reforms have been dramatic, a change to the scoring system and the introduction of an entire new position, a libero.

Traditionally, a team had only been able to score a point on its own serve. But that rule went by the by before the Sydney Games and now every rally results in a point.

To compensate for this, the first four sets of a volleyball match will now be won by the first team to reach 25 points, as opposed to 15 under the former regime.

The fifth and deciding set, if required, will still be fought out over 15 points. To win each set a team requires a break of two points over the opposition.

The points-scoring changes have resulted in faster-paced and more exciting matches, but the real revolution has been the introduction of a libero.

The thinking behind the introduction of the libero is to encourage longer rallies through more acrobatic and exciting defensive play.

Liberos are specialist back-court players who wear a different colour to the rest of the team.

They can substitute freely into any of the three back positions, but are prohibited from serving, spiking or rotating into the front-court.

In this position, agility is the key, the idea being that the libero will retrieve opposition shots which would otherwise have resulted in lost points.

Volleyball is a relatively modern sport, its history mirroring that of the modern Olympics almost precisely.

It began at a YMCA in Massachusetts, in the United States in 1895, an invention of William Morgan.

Morgan was a friend of James Naismith who had four years earlier invented the sport of basketball, also at a Massachusetts YMCA.

It may be an apocryphal tale, but legend has it that Morgan thought basketball was too strenuous a game for middle-aged men, so he came up with an alternative, which quickly became known as volleyball.

If that raison d'etre is accurate, Morgan would surely roll in his grave if he could see the speed, agility and athleticism required by elite volleyball players today.

At first, a basketball was used by Morgan's followers, but it proved too heavy, so a special, lighter ball was manufactured.

The sport was quick to spread. Aided by the YMCA network, it was introduced to Japan and from there into Asia.

It was a school sport in the US by 1913, but did not reach Europe until just before 1920.

By this time the sport had evolved to such an extent that it closely resembled the game as it is played today.

The set and spike, the game's attacking staple, was developed in the Philippines in 1916.

Rules dictating that each side comprise six players and being allowed only three hits in returning the ball soon followed.

International competition in volleyball began after World War I and the sport was admitted to the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964, and has been a fixture ever since.

It had a rocky introduction. The women's tournament was in jeopardy in the lead-up to the Tokyo Games after the North Korean team pulled out due to a political dispute.

This left organisers with a problem - they needed six teams to mount the competition. A solution was found, involving offering the South Korean team an incentive to compete.

It was fitting that Japan should host the first Olympic volleyball tournament, as the Japanese have been among the world powers in the sport since it entered the Games.

But it is the Soviet Union which has dominated the sport for much of its Olympic history. The Soviet men won the first volleyball gold on a countback (Japan won the first women's gold) and that run of success continued into the 1970s and 1980s.

However, success has been shared in recent Games. The Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Brazil won the past three men's Olympic tournaments while Cuba, Cuba and Beijing hosts China won the past three women's gold medals.