There’s no question about it: Olympians spend a ton of time competing, training for their events, and recovering from all the work they’ve put in. But the Olympics is 19 days long—meaning there’s 456 hours to fill—so surely there’s time for some…extracurriculars, right?
Over the years, there’s been a lot of speculation about dating, hookups, and sex in the Olympic Village, fueled in part by the (official) massive condom giveaways and by candid interviews with some of the top stars. Take this spicy 2012 ESPN article, where athletes like Ryan Lochte, Hope Solo, and others gave the intel on what’s really going down (sorry) at the Games.
After all, there just might be a reason why “what happens in the village stays in the village” could be considered the second motto of the Olympics, as swimmer Summer Sanders told ESPN. And as target shooter Josh Lakatos said of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, “I’ve never witnessed so much debauchery in my entire life."
House young, fit people together for the duration of a high-stakes, adrenaline-pumping event, and, well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that the atmosphere can get a little steamy. But things can change in a dozen years, especially once you add a global pandemic to the mix, so we decided to do a little digging into what the actual rules (if any) say for athletes going to Paris.
First of all, you might have wondered if sex among athletes was even allowed during the last Summer Games, in Tokyo, since references to an intimacy ban and cardboard “anti-sex beds” kept popping up over and over again in articles. Some background: In advance of the Games (which were delayed until 2021 due to COVID-19), Tokyo 2020 organizers, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Paralympic Committee jointly released a 70-page playbook for athletes and officials, detailing recommendations for preventing the spread of the virus. One section that stood out? “[Minimize] Physical Interaction,” which advised avoiding any form of physical contact, including hugs and handshakes. And that may have been why so many folks were talking about an intimacy ban.
While the term was widely used in relation to the Tokyo restrictions, it’s actually a misnomer: “There was no intimacy ban in Tokyo, but rather health restrictions linked to COVID,” Mélissa Chovino, a spokesperson for the Paris 2024 organizing committee, tells SELF. Chovino clarifies that the ban did not target sex acts alone, but rather any kind of contact that would require close physical proximity (which, by its very nature, would include sex). As the playbook stated, this was to boost safety not only for the athletes, but also for the residents of Japan. Even so, the IOC still passed out 150,000 condoms that year, according to CBS News. Not much had changed by the next year. During the 2022 Beijing Games, close physical contact was still explicitly discouraged.
All that brings us to Paris, where these kinds of rules will be more relaxed. Generally speaking, Paris will “definitely be a much different experience than Tokyo,” Ilona Maher, a Team USA rugby player who competed in Japan, tells SELF. For one, no “restrictions regarding sexual activity” will be in place, according to Chovino. “Paris 2024 is not imposing, nor have we been asked to implement, any restrictions in this regard,” she says. And regardless, the IOC is “not policing what people are doing in the village,” Maher says.
Athletes will still have to contend with the cardboard beds—14,250 of them, to be exact, according to Chovino—but they’re probably not the deterrent you might think. While their sturdiness has been disputed, Maher has pointed out that Olympians aren’t exactly a demographic that would need the physical support. “Y’all thinking athletes, Olympic athletes, the top 1% in the world, are gonna be deterred by some cardboard?” she asked in a May TikTok captioned “bffr.” “We’re the best at what we do, but we’re gonna see a cardboard bed and be like, ‘Ugh, sorry, babe, can’t get freaky tonight, it’s cardboard, what are we gonna do?’ No. Okay? They’ll find a way.”
What’s more, it seems like organizers took the possibility (or inevitability) of R-rated antics among Olympians into consideration as they planned Paris. Arriving teams will have access to plenty of protection—a continuation of a tradition that began in Seoul in the 1980s to raise awareness of HIV/AIDs, according to CBS Sports. In total, organizers have stocked up on 200,000 male condoms with latex; 10,000 male condoms without latex; 20,000 female condoms; and 10,000 oral dams, according to Chovino.
There’s “definitely vending machines everywhere” filled with condoms, Des Linden, a US marathoner who competed in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, tells SELF.
If you’re doing the math—there will be roughly 10,500 Olympians attending, so that’s about 23 pieces of protection per person—and thinking that figure seems awfully high, it’s important to note that the giveaway isn’t all about immediate action. “The volume of condoms ordered is in no way representative of the athletes’ sexual activity,” Chovino says, adding the number is on par with that present at previous iterations of the Games. Instead, she clarifies, the primary objective of the condom policy is “to raise athletes’ awareness of STIs and how they are transmitted.” In fact, STI prevention is one of two pillars of the Paris Games’ prevention policy, reflecting concern about the resurgence of STIs, Chovino says. To that end, she adds, the village medical clinic will provide preventive STI testing services. And if an athlete does pick up an STI, the clinic is prepared to start treatment.
Regardless of the condoms’ intended purpose, athletes will have the opportunity to mix and mingle (and more) if they so choose. Laurent Michaud, the director of the Paris Olympic Village, told Sky News that the village will feature a lounge and an alcohol-free sports bar. “We wanted to create some places where the athletes would feel very enthusiastic and comfortable so they can have some conversations, discussions, and to share their core values about sports,” he said. Even in the absence of booze, it’s not hard to imagine that some may wind up doing more than just talking—and those who aren’t into the bar scene will have plenty of opportunities for meet-cutes too. In addition to the lounge and sports bar, the village will contain several other shared spaces and public venues, including a post office, a mini-market, a hair salon, and a medical clinic, Chovino says. (Sure, not exactly the hottest of locales but, well, you never know.)
From the sounds of it, those meet-cutes can be born of emotional affinity as well as physical attraction—Olympians tend to feel a certain kinship with one another, according to Maher. “Not everybody knows what it's like to be an Olympian. Not everyone can really say what it’s like to train your hardest for something and win and also [have] a big chance to lose as well,” she says. “And you connect over that, you bond over that with people.”
In fact, several prominent relationships have reportedly emerged from the Games. Some notable examples: Swiss tennis player Roger Federer and wife Mirka Vavrinec, who met in Sydney in 2000, as well as figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi and husband Bret Hedican, who first connected in Albertville, France, in 1992, according to Bustle.
Overall, the atmosphere in the Olympic Village isn’t all that different from that of a college campus, according to Maher. If “flirting happens and whatnot, that’s kind of just part of it,” she says. And if that flirting goes further? Well, considering that Ryan Lochte estimated to ESPN that 70% to 75% of Olympians get it on during the Games, that might just be inevitable.
Related:
