Speaking about the volleyball at the Olympics it's necessary to mention that the motherland of volleyball is the USA. This new ball game was invented by William Morgan - the manager of training department of Christian Society in Massachusetts. He offered to throw the ball over the net, adjusted 2 meters above the ground. The name of new game was given by Alfred Hallstead - the Springfield college teacher. He put the meaning of "kicked in a flight ball". In 1896 the first volleyball game was introduced to the audience. And in a year exact rules that had only ten items were published in the American newspaper. Just some years later this game gained an astonishing success in Canada (1900), and Cuba (1906). Afterwards a lot of countries joined the rows of volleyball fans: Peru, Brasilia, Uruguay, Puerto-Rico, Mexico. 1913 is considered to be the start of volleyball at the Olympics and other well-known World Championships. The volleyball tournament with the participation of numerous teams from the USA, Japan, China, Philippines was successfully opened. Its worthy admitting that in Europe this game was brought at the beginning of the 20th century. It started its life in England (1914) and got especial popularity in France, where appeared in 1917. Step by step the volleyball is spreading over the Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USSR. It is the prosperous time of the first official volleyball national games and Europe championships. During the volleyball development its rules, technique and tactics were significantly changed. Volleyball became more collective game. Its players started tended to force serve, widely used various deceitful punches, paid more attention to passes, improved defense and changed the whole dynamics of the game. As a matter of fact the first official volleyball competition took place in Brookline, 1922. In 1924 it was offered to discuss the problem of volleyball at the Olympics (the idea belonged to Americans). But it got no support. And volleyball at the Olympics 1924 in France left to be just dream. In 1934 Stockholm founded the volleyball technical commission, which included 13 European Countries, 5 countries from the American continent and 4 Asian countries. By the way the official rules of the game were based on the American variant. Not long ago a new version of volleyball was invented on the basis of "classical" volleyball. It was included into the Summer Games (Atlanta, 1996). The outdoor volleyball (or beach volleyball) is held on the sand and engages only two players instead of traditional six players. Nowadays volleyball at the Olympics contains two events: team men's championship and team women's championship. Women team joined Olympic Game in 1964. Volleyball Olympic tournament represents 12 men's and 12 women's teams. The team list varies depending on the previous team's results. The tournament has three stages. In conclusion I can't omit the fact that volleyball Olympic tournament and volleyball competition formula provided a great deal of new sportsmen's stars: women: F.Ventirini, A.Mozer (Brasilia), Lan Pin, Chen Mejchju, Jan Silan, R.Bell, I. Gato, L.Izkuero, M.Karvahal, M.Luis; men: A.Guweya, M.Lima, M.Negrao, P.Topholy, X. Wagner.