MARY HANNIGAN'S OLYMPIC TV VIEW'LOOK AT that stadium, absolutely packed," said a surprised Hazel Irvine on the BBC's Olympic Breakfast as we dropped into the Chaoyang Arena for a women's beach volleyball ding-dong, or "game" as they're more accurately known.

"Amazing atmosphere," she said, and there was too. Georgia, Russia and their respective supporters seemed to be well up for it.

Commentator Matt Chilton is probably more than a bit accustomed to all human life turning up for a peak at women's beach volleyball, spectators who wouldn't, frankly, know an open-hand dink from a pint of Bass, but yesterday he noted that there was more interest than usual, for obvious reasons, which he found "disappointing".

We sympathised with his dismay, but we don't think the BBC were there for the open-hand dinks either, opting to put Matt on duty for a match between the 22nd and 15th seeds because, as Hazel put it, it was "intriguing, poignant and fascinating".

Most intriguing, though, was the choice of music to mark the conclusion of each rally, if that's what you call them. For example: "Some girls will, (ooh ooh ah), some girls won't, (aah aah ooh), some girls need a lot of lovin' and some girls don't."

When did you last hear that seminal Racey hit-parade topper? Interesting fact: Michael Phelps was six years away from being born when Racey first rocked our world with that thigh-slapper.

Next up, after Georgia's Christine Santanna almost removed Russia's Natalia Uryadova's head with what you'd call an overhead smash if it were tennis, was AC/DC's Highway to Hell, which we felt was a peculiar choice, what with its mention of Satan and all.

For Russia, alas, it did, indeed, turn out to be a hellish experience, their pair losing the match having won the first set comfortably.

That, of course, is when things turned ugly. Hazel told us the Russians felt a bit aggrieved that the two "Georgians" who beat them were in fact Brazilians (Brazil being the spiritual home of all things beach volleyball).

"I don't want this to be a war between us," Georgian Brazilian Santanna replied, which made us wonder if she'd heard the news recently. But she rejected the charge, insisting that she had, in fact, visited Georgia twice and intended doing so again, some time in the future. When she and her fellow Georgian Brazilian Andrezza Chagas touch down in Atlanta they will, we fear, wonder why there's no one there to greet them.

The story of the day, though, was that Phelps man winning his . . . lost count . . . severalth gold medal. He has now heard his anthem more times than we've heard "well, s/he is really aiming for London 2012".

"He has a kick like an outboard motor," Gary O'Toole explained to Bill O'Herlihy, after we watched Phelps win the 200 metres butterfly. Mind you, the American looked less than ecstatic after the race - turned out he had goggles trouble.

"I have never heard of someone's goggles being full of water in 20 years of international swimming - it was ridiculous," said BBC expert Steve Parry. Cripes, Steve, where have you been? At least Ireland's Melanie Nocher can come home knowing she has something in common with the maestro.

Despite the mishap, Phelps won gold and broke the world record with a time of 1:52.03.

"My goggles kept filling up with water during the race," he said. "I wanted a world record, I wanted 1:51 or better, but in the circumstances it's not too bad I guess."

"He must be gutted," giggled Adrian Chiles.

Gutted? No one was more gutted than Alicia Sacramone. First up the American gymnast, incidentally a "spokesmodel" for CoverGirl cosmetics, fell off her beam. Then, when it was time for the floor exercise, well, it just got worse.

"Super high full twisting double back, gives nothing away on her landings," said the BBC person who's name we didn't catch. "Double Arabian! And she sits it down! Goodness me, what a surprise! Double pike - out again!"

We, need it be said, didn't know if it was a good thing to sit down a double Arabian or fall out of a double pike, but when Alicia received a score of 14.125 and her bottom lip started quivering, we took it that it was a very, very bad thing.

On the other hand, Alicia's team-mate Anastasia Liukin, not to be too technical about it, stood up her double Arabian, as demonstrated to us by the BBC's Matt Baker using StroMotion - that's their image enhancement thingamajig which "creates stunning trajectory video footage revealing the evolution of an athlete's movement, technique, execution and tactics over space and time" (press releases, we'd be lost without them).

"She leaves her legs behind, puts her hips through first and then sort of pulls them through afterwards," he said.

"Good God," said Adrian's face.

Some girls will, some girls won't. And if some girls even tried they'd end up in AE.