It is said that in this quatrain the medieval French mystic Nostradamus foresaw the dark day when beach volleyball would become an Olympic sport:
* *
There by the Palace Horse Guards in Londinium
the four maidens leaping round a net, not blind but dumb.
On a beach with no ocean, only land
Coubertin weeps to see the rectangle of sand.
– Nostradamus (Book VI) 1536
* *
