Beach Volleyball is most popular sport for ministers

He said top sponsors could buy up to 13,500 tickets, but the Government had not taken up its full allocation, purchasing instead just 8,800 at a cost of £750,000.

Around 3,300 will be used for dignitaries, 2,000 will be given to local authorities while more than 2,000 are expected to be sold to staff involved with the Games.

Beach volleyball, which will be played at Horse Guards Parade, in the heart of Whitehall, became one of the fastest events to sell out at the Games.

Many put the sport’s popularity down to the athlete’s regulation attire, which sees women wearing closely fitted tops and tiny briefs and men in vests and shorts.

Smiles were raised at the Culture Media and Sport select committee when Mr Sutcliffe asked: “Can you explain why there seems to be a strong interest in beach volleyball among ministers and civil servants?”

Mr Stephens responded: “When purchasing tickets for staff to purchase we thought they were most likely going to be able to go at the weekend or on Fridays.”

In the Beijing Olympics four years ago the Americans won the gold medal in both the men’s and women’s event.

London 2012 Olympics: Beach Volleyball is most popular sport for ministers

He said top sponsors could buy up to 13,500 tickets, but the Government had not taken up its full allocation, purchasing instead just 8,800 at a cost of £750,000.

Around 3,300 will be used for dignitaries, 2,000 will be given to local authorities while more than 2,000 are expected to be sold to staff involved with the Games.

Beach volleyball, which will be played at Horse Guards Parade, in the heart of Whitehall, became one of the fastest events to sell out at the Games.

Many put the sport’s popularity down to the athlete’s regulation attire, which sees women wearing closely fitted tops and tiny briefs and men in vests and shorts.

Smiles were raised at the Culture Media and Sport select committee when Mr Sutcliffe asked: “Can you explain why there seems to be a strong interest in beach volleyball among ministers and civil servants?”

Mr Stephens responded: “When purchasing tickets for staff to purchase we thought they were most likely going to be able to go at the weekend or on Fridays.”

In the Beijing Olympics four years ago the Americans won the gold medal in both the men’s and women’s event.

Coalition to boost club links as students shun sport on leaving school

The Football Association has pledged that 2,000 clubs will be linked to secondary schools by 2017, rugby union has a target of 1,300 clubs, cricket 1,250 clubs, and rugby league and tennis 1,000 clubs each.

Schools will also receive funding to throw open facilities to the wider public in their communities.

The change of policy has taken 18 months to devise and follows huge cuts to education funding for school sports, but Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt defended the timing and substance of the new policy.

“The one-million target was not going to be delivered whichever government was in power, so we have acknowledged that a top-down, target-driven approach was not going to work,” he said. “If we don’t deliver significant increases in the number of people in sport at 16, 18 and 24 then this policy will have failed, but the existing target was not going to be delivered.

“Even when Labour was ring-fencing money for school sport the funding was in decline, so we should not pretend that everything was rosy.”

Sport England will be responsible for delivering the new policy despite failing to hit previous targets. Governing bodies will face financial penalties if they fail to deliver improvements in performance.