Volleyball has been played in every single Olympic Games since 1964. Here we chart the history of the sport in the biggest ever sporting spectacle.
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Volleyball’s origins as a sport can be traced back to the late 1800s yet it wasn’t until the 1924 Olympics that the game first made an appearance in the multi-sport event. Even then it was not as part of the official Games; volleyball was played as part of an American sports demonstration event. The sport was not made part of the Games until the second World War came to an end but has been a steady part of the Olympics since. 8 countries have won gold medals in the men’s volleyball contests whereas women’s volleyball has seen the gold medal distributed among five different countries.
Post WWII, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) was formed alongside a number of continental confederations that wanted to promote the sport and thus also bring it to the Olympics.
In 1957, a special tournament was held in the city of Sofia in Bulgaria, the same place that the 53rd session of the IOC was taking place, in a bid to support the request to include the sport in the Olympics.
The tournament worked; volleyball was included in the Olympics and made its bow in the multi-sport event in 1964 and has remained a part of the Olympics since.
However, the Olympic Committee had originally dropped volleyball from the list of sports that would be conducted in the 1968 Olympics. The decision was met with protests and since then the sport has remained part of the event.
The original format of the tournament that took place in the Olympics was similar to that of the one used in the Volleyball World Cup – a simple round-robin tournament where all teams faced each other and the winner was determined based on number of points, set average and point average.
The major drawback of this format was that winners of the medals could well be established before the end of the league format. When that did indeed happen, the audience began to lose interest in the remaining games.
The format was then modified in the 1972 Olympics. The twelve participating teams would be divided into two pools of six, wherein the top 4 sides from each pool would make it to the quarterfinal round.
The quarterfinals are determined based on the position the teams finish in the group stages. Let the teams from Pool A and Pool B be A1, A2, A3, A4 and B1, B2, B3 and B4. A1 plays B4, A2 plays B3, A3 plays B2 and A4 plays B1.
The teams that lose the semi-finals contest the bronze medal play-off, with the team that loses the final being handed the silver medal.
Medal History
The men’s volleyball tournaments in the Games have seen more winners than the women’s tournaments.
Soviet Union won the first two golds in the men’s tournament, before Japan and Poland won the next two golds. Soviet Union won the gold again in 1980, the last time they would ever win that medal.
USA won two successive golds thereafter, with Brazil and Netherlands picking up a gold each thereafter.
2000 saw the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro, now just Serbia) pick up their one and only gold medal in men’s volleyball.
Brazil won the gold in 2004 and 2016 at home, with USA and Russia winning the gold in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
The first women’s volleyball gold medallists were Japan in 1964. Soviet Union won the next two golds before Japan won their second gold in 1976. Soviet Union then won the gold in 1980 and 1988, with China winning their maiden gold in 1984.
Cuba then won a hat-trick of golds from 1992-2000 and have never won another gold since. China won gold in 2004 and 2016, with Brazil winning the two gold medals during that time period.
Whether or not the sport welcomes new gold medallists to the fold in the 2021 Games remains to be seen.
