“The girls are in skimpy panties and bras, the dudes in underwear, so you see what everybody is working with from the jump. Even if their face is a 7, their body is a 20.” – Breaux Greer, American javelin thrower.
Saw this book and I sent a fan letter to the author. I’d buy the book for the cover alone, I told him.
“Unfortunately the cover and certain in-story behavior got my book removed as ‘inappropriate content’ from one of those reading sites,” P.J. Christman said. “Guess they haven’t seen any recent track meets, or don’t understand fit young people in light attire conjuring up private entertainment.”
I understand. Been there and yet barely recollect myself. But got me to thinking.
Do they really need all those condoms at the Olympics?
“Many of these women and men have been out of the dating game or never in the dating game before the Olympics,” explained the source, “so it’s a lot to take in for these athletes, especially after training so hard to be here.”
The Stimulating History of Free Condoms at the Olympics
By Ellen Gutoskey for Mentalfloss.com
When the Tokyo Summer Olympics kicked off in 2021, there were masks, nasal swabs, and a mandate that athletes “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact” to combat the spread of COVID-19. There were also some 160,000 free condoms. To accommodate these two mixed messages, organizers simply told everyone to take the condoms home with them as souvenirs.
At this year’s Beijing Olympics, the situation is similarly paradoxical. Handshakes and hugs are frowned upon, and social distancing is encouraged. But athletes and other personnel inside the Olympic bubble don’t have to hunt for rubbers. “All Olympic-related units will provide appropriate quantities of condoms for free at the appropriate time to people who’ve checked in to stay inside the loop,” organizers told Reuters.
In short, it’s clear that not even a pandemic can stop the world from showering Olympic athletes with free condoms. (Never mind that the pandemic did cause the Tokyo Olympics to be postponed a whole year.) Ironically, when the custom began back in 1988, it was meant to prevent a different infectious disease outbreak from escalating into a pandemic: AIDS.
Sex Education
By the time Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was preparing to host the 1988 Winter Olympics, AIDS cases raged across the globe. Public health experts advised Olympic organizers to supply their athletes with free condoms, which were then stocked in the pharmacy at the Olympic Village. Sure, competitors had to ask for them, but there wasn’t exactly a culture of secrecy around sex during their stay: The on-campus store even carried porn magazines.
“We’re not running a Victorian temperance society here,” Olympic Village mayor Bob Niven told the Associated Press.
AIDS prevention plans were already in the works for the upcoming Summer Olympics, too, which would take place in Seoul, South Korea, that same fall. After scrapping a proposal to test all the athletes for the disease, officials decided to supply the Village with 6000 or more condoms, along with pamphlets explaining the hazards of AIDS.
Future Olympic organizers upheld the precedent, varying the specifics and increasing the number of condoms with gusto. When Albertville, France, hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics, the 36,000 condoms distributed were free for athletes and roughly $2 a pack for other personnel; the condoms also matched the colors of the Olympic rings: blue, yellow, black, green, and red. At Barcelona’s Summer Olympics later that year, the condoms, which now numbered at least 60,000, were initially available to purchase from vending machines in the Village’s on-site discotheque. But according to one news report, athletes “complained they never had the right change,” so officials just handed them out for free.
Lillehammer, Norway’s 1994 Winter Olympics featured vending machines, too, placed in schools set to house volunteers. Though students were on break during the Games, class was still in session when the dispensers first appeared in the halls. “The machines came as a total surprise. In addition, there were notes saying that some of the condoms had a taste of raspberry, which the students here found extremely amusing,” one school principal told the press.
It was also in Lillehammer that news outlets reported an unholy flood of condoms cramming the sewage system, due to Olympians’ habit of flushing them down their toilets around the clock.
It Takes a Village
Since its inception, the free-condom custom has overtly aimed at curbing the transmission of AIDS, as well as encouraging safe sex. That didn’t necessarily change with the arrival of the 21st century, as AIDS was still a global crisis. But the success of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) as a form of HIV treatment sparked hope in the late 1990s that those living with HIV could still go on to lead long, healthy lives. In the early aughts, the commercial marketing and publicity surrounding condoms at the Olympics began to be a little less about public health and much more about winking at the by then well-known amorous tendencies of Olympians.
At the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, athletes were depleting the 50,000-strong condom cache so quickly that manufacturer Ansell shipped an additional 20,000 to the Village several days before the closing ceremony. “Judging by the demand the medal tally is certainly rising both in and out of the sporting arena,” an Ansell spokesperson said. He also revealed that products with “peppermint green studs” and “strawberry ribbing” were especially hot commodities, and that certain athletes had asked for larger sizes. Durex took over as supplier for the 2004 Athens Olympics, providing a staggering 130,000 condoms and 30,000 lubricant packets “to smooth the performance of the world’s elite sports people in the arena and under the covers,” according to a statement.
All the condom talk also gave rise to a number of cheeky and occasionally ill-conceived think pieces about everything from how sexual activity might impact athletic performance to which Olympians should couple up. One 2008 article even laid out a math problem asking readers to use stats—condom supply, number of athletes, length of Games—to determine how often Beijing’s Olympic planners had expected competitors to get physical.
The condom count has hovered around 100,000 for the last 20 years or so, but Rio de Janeiro broke all records in 2016 by distributing 450,000 condoms, 100,000 of which were female condoms (a first in Olympic history). And while the pandemic has undoubtedly dulled sanctioned support for sex during the Games, organizers’ reason for continuing the giveaway is the same as it’s always been: Birds do it, bees do it, even world-class athletes performing near-superhuman feats do it—and since they’re going to do it, let’s make sure they do it safely.
A Brief History of Sex at the Olympics
BY LAURA STAMPLER FEBRUARY 13, 2014 for TIME
Tuesday the internet erupted in a wave of Sochi shock that had nothing to do with dangerous half pipes, packs of wild dogs, or atrocious hotel accommodations.
Can you believe that Olympic athletes are all using Tinder—a DATING APP—at the Olympic village? So much so that “Tinder hook-ups [are] off the hook”? This is completely unexpected. Why would the world’s best athletes, in their physical prime, with endorphins to kill and calories to burn, and who are all compressed in a small living space be so interested in this particular extracurricular activity?
Tinder-gate of Sochi 2014 is just the most recent round of faux-surprise that Olympians might, in fact, be having sex. (Because while it’s ok to allude to the deed by sexifying female athletes, the idea that anyone’s having any actual sex is a different thing completely.)
We’ve rounded up a history of how sex at Olympic village has been covered over the last few decades. And judging by the florid prose in the dispatches below, the journalists seem to be pretty overheated as well.
Sochi 2014:
The games have just begun, but it’s already the year of Tinder and talk of 100,000 condoms circulating around the Olympic Village.
London 2012:
The London Olympics probably saw the most headlines regarding athlete-on-athlete sexcapades. “Gay app Grindr crashes as Olympic athletes arrive in London,” read the Mirror. “Could London 2012 be the raunchiest games ever?” asked the Daily Mail. “Steamy London Olympics: A Condom-a-Day, Per Athlete,” wrote Businessweek of the 150,000 condoms distributed. “Who Will Win the Sex Olympics?” questioned Forbes — Durex was the right answer.
Althletes were particularly candid about their sex lives, as well. “I’ve seen people having sex right out in the open,” U.S. soccer star Hope Solo told ESPN in a long expose of Olympians’ sexual encounters. “On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty.”
Ryan Lochte said: “My last Olympics, I had a girlfriend — big mistake. Now I’m single, so London should be really good. I’m excited.”
Other athlete sex secrets as our timeline continues.
Vancouver 2010:
Snowboarder Scotty Lago, 22, went home earlier than anticipate after TMZ leaked a photo showing a fan biting on his bronze medal when it was hanging from his belt buckle. (He had no events left to compete in.)
CNN ran the headline, “Vancouver medals in condom distribution”
ESPN reported that six athletes had an orgy in a hot tub right outside the Village.
Beijing 2008:
Former Olympic table tennis player Matthew Syed wrote an article for the Times of London noting that there was a “sex fest… right here in Beijing. Olympic athletes have to display an unnatural… level of self-discipline in the build-up to big competitions. How else is this going to manifest itself than with a volcanic release of pent-up hedonism.” This led to a headlines asserting that the Olympic Village hosted “More Sex than Woodstock.”
Page Six discussed Michael Phelps “celebrated his record-breaking eight gold medals in Beijing by sneaking off for a sizzling game of tonsil hockey with one of Australia’s hottest Olympians.” (She was his girlfriend.)
Oh, and Beijing authorities distributed 400,000 condoms to more than 400 hotels in the Olympic city, said the AFP. Although other sources reported only 100,000 were provided for athletes.
Solo told ESPN in 2012 that she slept with a celebrity in Beijing, but she wouldn’t say who it was.
Salt Lake City 2002:
The conservative city hosted some protests against Olympic policies to distribute free condoms to athletes.
Sydney 2000:
Officials thought that 70,000 (rainbow) condoms would be enough. They had to send out for 20,000 more after a week.
Javelin thrower Breaux Greer told ESPN that he had relations with three women every day of the Olympics — two were other Olympians and another was a tourist.
He had to leave the games due to a knee injury.
Norway 1994:
Skier Carrie Sheinberg told ESPN that two German bobsledders “made it clear that they’d trade me their gold for all kinds of other favors. I said jokingly, ‘Thanks, but Tommy Moe has a medal. I’ll play with his.’”
Barcelona 1992:
Even though he played ping pong, Matthew Syed said he “got laid more often in those two and a half weeks than the rest of my life up to that point.”
This is when condoms began getting offered to Olympians to encourage safe sex during the games.
Seoul 1988
There were reports of so many condoms found on the roofs of Olympic residences that the Olympic Association banned outdoor sex.
The Closing Ceremony For Real
from Sam Alipour, ESPN The Magazine Jul 8, 2012,
And then it’s over — for most Olympians, anyway. For a few and the most committed, the games continue — all the way home. On a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles in 2000, nearly 100 Olympians were among the passengers, causing the flight attendants to begin the flight with a warning: “Ladies and gentlemen, anybody who wishes to sleep, trade seats with someone in the front of the plane. Everybody else to the back with the Olympians.”
After that, the story gets fuzzy.
“Everybody partnered up fairly rapidly, and when they’d bring a drink cart through, we’d send it back dry,” says Lakatos, who met a girl and “comfortably occupied row 50-something for roughly half an hour.” Greer ended up in the bathroom with a famous Olympian he will not name.
“We’re going at it, and then — boing. I accidentally turn on the assistance light.”
Happily for them, once Greer assured the flight attendant of their Olympic credentials, they were able to return to their business.
“And we stayed in there a long time.”