A truce may have been declared in South Ossetia, but tell that to the female beach volleyball players of Russia and Georgia. Hours after the guns fell silent in the disputed border region a few thousand miles away, insults were flying between the two countries as they extended their hostilities to a sandpit in central Beijing.

In a hot and steamy arena in Chaoyang Park, the combat gear was skimpy bikinis and victory meant a place in the next round of the Olympic Games. Away from the reality of geopolitics, the battle of the beach babes resulted in Russia being overpowered by superior firepower and Georgia striding on as conquerors.

Or was that Brazil? It was if you listened to the Russians as they grumpily licked their wounds in defeat, for it turns out that the Georgian pair had been imported from the sunny shores of Rio de Janeiro. The Black Sea is not known for its beach volleyball. Having gained dual citizenship three years ago, Cristine Santanna and Andrezza Chagas go by the nicknames of “Saka” and “Rtvelo”, which put together spell the Georgian word for Georgia. Cute, perhaps, if you have not just been beaten by them. “We were not playing against the Georgian team,” Natalia Uryadova, of Russia, said after losing 15-12 in the third and deciding set. “We were playing against the Brazilian team. If they are Georgian, they would have been influenced [by the war], but certainly they are not.”

It might have been all friendly hugs at the start of the match, but by its end the barbs were out. Weary of comparisons between the match and world affairs, Alexandra Shiryaeva, Uryadova's slightly less sulky team-mate, was adamant that events back home had played no part in the contest. “There was no politics in this game. After all, these girls are Brazilian,” Shiryaeva said. “I don't suppose they even know who the Georgian President is.”

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Santanna, aka Saka, snapped back across the press conference dais: “Of course I know who the President is. It's Mikheil Saakashvili and I was with his wife here two days ago in the village.” Take that.

Santanna was not finished. “I feel Georgian,” she said. “I've got a Georgian and a Brazilian passport and we did this for the Georgian people. I really didn't want this situation between the players. I don't want this to be a war between us.”

Too late. The Russians were back on the attack. “It was stupid of Georgia to start a war,” Shiryaeva said. “We're big and they're small. But it's always been that way through history. I am just a volleyball player. I don't know anything about war. This is just my opinion, from one Russian girl.”

While claiming empathy with the Georgian people, the Georgian/Brazilian pair did admit that they had only twice visited the country whose flag they are flying - once to collect their passports - but they promised to go after the Games for at least two weeks.

Their Portuguese accents and Brazilian addresses will not dampen Georgian celebrations, however. Their Olympic team need all the morale-boosting they can get. Having initially voted to return home after the outbreak of war last week, the athletes were persuaded to stay to compete in the name of the Olympic spirit. Few, though, have been able to keep Georgia off their minds.

“It's hard because nobody can compete here,” Levan Akhvlediani, president of the Georgian volleyball federation, said. “We had the world No1 in judo but we got no medals because it is too psychological. So any small win is a great win. I have slept two, three, four hours since the war started. But when we are in the village, we have to concentrate on the Games even when we are at war.”

The context for this contest could not have been more absurd. As if a dozen pom-pom wearing beach girls shimmying around in bikinis during time-outs were not tacky enough, the choice of music between points displayed a lack of understanding of the wider picture.

Tom Jones's Sex Bomb was probably not a wise choice of track, but Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones was going too far. And if you are going to pick one line from Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You, in the circumstances, it probably should not be: “I'm a burning effigy of everything I used to be.” But this is the Olympics, where sport is distinct from politics, or so the Chinese organisers keep telling us.