Beach volleyball referee Richard Casutt is under strict orders to lose weight before the London Olympics to fit in with the sport's svelte and sculpted image. Kelly Exelby reports.
Mahe Drysdale will scull thousands of kilometres in the lead-up to the London Olympics while Nick Willis will amass a similar number as he seeks to go one better than his silver in Beijing.
Richard Casutt is also pre-London countdown mode, although the leading beach volleyball referee's goals are entirely different as he clocks up the kilometres on his stationary bike and beats a path down the beach every morning.
The 40-year-old sport development manager, who was in charge of the technical officials at the weekend's Oceania zone Olympic qualifier at Mt Maunganui, is in serious weight loss mode after being told by the FIVB, volleyball's world body, to ditch a few kgs before he gets to London.
Casutt stands out amongst the beach volleyball fraternity, with their tanned, toned biceps and flat abs (and that's just the female players).
However, he has been getting serious the past few months about trimming down to fit in better.
Ankle, knee and back injuries from his years as a player mean it's beach walks rather than daily half marathons he's churning through though.
"There's a definite image around beach volleyball and I am wary of my weight - they (FIVB) want us looking our best for London," Casutt said.
"I carry a few extra pounds here and there but I'm working hard to get them off.
"I haven't been given a target weight to get to or anything but I want to be at a reasonable level. (The FIVB) can manage it to a point and there's rules in place for all the new refs but I guess the main thing is that it doesn't affect my performance."
London will be Casutt's second Olympics after debuting four years ago in Beijing, although he worked in Sydney a dozen years ago as a field of play manager on the sand.
He'll be content to make less of a splash at the London Games than he did in China, where he was lead referee in eight games and caused a stir by dishing out a red card in the quarter-final between Germany and US. It was a bold move considering only five red cards (loss of point) have been handed out in Olympic history.
Casutt pinged German Eric Koreng against Americans Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser, the top-ranked beach volleyball team in the world at the time. The Germans lost the first set 21-13 without much of a struggle and had blown a 6-2 lead in the second when the yellow card emerged when Koreng argued a point with Casutt, which was then followed by the red. "The German Chancellor was after me after the game and I copped a bit of hate mail on my Facebook page, although it's part of what we do.
"We follow a process that's pretty clear, and while there's people who say you shouldn't be giving out red cards (in an Olympic quarter-final), the reality is the German player stepped outside the boundary. It wasn't a rush decision, it was quite planned, and generally the players are really good at an Olympics - more polite than on the world tour anyway."
Casutt qualified as a world tour referee in 1996 and cut his teeth in Asia, using a Prime Minister's scholarship in 2005 to further his career in Europe.
He has officiated at 49 world tour events and will bring that up to 50 at the US$300,000 Grand Slam in Shanghai, moving on to Beijing, Norway, Switzerland and Berlin prior to Olympics.
Whether he's joined by any of the four Kiwi combinations still in with a shot at playing in London is unclear, although the man known around the traps as "Sooty" likes the new qualifying format which has the top 16 combos in the world automatically qualify and seven slots via the continental route.
Cassut has seen plenty in 17 years on the circuit, from bundling a male streaker off the sand in front of 12,000 Austrians at a Grand Slam final, to beating a hurried retreat from the ref's stand in Indonesia as the previous night's meal threatened to bubble over.