| Jean-Philippe Jodard | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||
| Nationality | French | |||||||||||||
| Born | July 8, 1966 Auxerre, France | |||||||||||||
Honours
| ||||||||||||||
Jean-Philippe Jodard (born July 8, 1966 in Auxerre) is a retired male beach volleyball player from France, who competed in two consecutive Summer Olympics for his native country, starting in 1996. He became the first official European champion in men's beach volleyball, when he won the title in 1993 alongside Christian Penigaud.
Auxerre is the capital of the Yonne department and the fourth-largest city in Burgundy. Auxerre's population today is about 39,000; the metropolitan area comprises roughly 92,000 inhabitants. Residents of Auxerre are referred to as Auxerrois.
Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two players on a sand court divided by a net. As in indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side of the court, and to prevent the same effort by the opponent. A team is allowed up to three touches to return the ball across the net, and individual players may not touch the ball twice consecutively except after making a block touch. The ball is put in play with a serve—a hit by the server from behind the rear court boundary over the net to the opponents. The rally continues until the ball is grounded on the playing court, goes "out", or a fault is made in the attempt to return the ball. The team that wins the rally scores a point and serves to start the following rally. The four players serve in the same sequence throughout the match, changing server each time a rally is won by the receiving team.
France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany to the northeast, Switzerland and Italy to the east, and Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres (248,573 sq mi) and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille and Nice.
