Laurent Michaud,director of the Olympic and Paralympic Village,said 300,000 condoms would be available to athletes in Paris.
About 300,000 condoms will be available for athletes at the Olympics this year.Getty
“We are aiming to have 300,000 condoms here at disposal for the athletes in the village. It’s a quantity that makes sure that everybody will have what they’re expecting and what they need,” he.
“We’re going to have 14,250 residents – athletes,personnel,officials – that are coming for these great events and to live an extraordinary experience here.
“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 sport.
But while sex is in,alcohol is out,with Michaud saying that athletes will have to wait until they’ve left the athletes’ village to enjoy all the champagne France has to offer.
Condoms handed out to the German team at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.Reuters
“We have made a village club also,with a lounge,with a sports bar with Coca-Cola,no alcohol of course over there,but it’s going to be a great place,so they can actually share their moment and the environment here,” he said.
“No champagne in the village,of course,but they can have all the champagne they want in Paris.”
It’s not the first time condoms have been distributed at the Olympics - it’s become a kind of tradition at both the summer and winter Games since they were first distributed at the 1988 Games in Seoul to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.
About 8500 condoms were provided at Seoul – the same number of athletes competing – but since then,organisers have upped their orders.
The 2000 Olympics in Sydney originally ordered just 70,000 condoms,thinking it would be enough,but were proven wrong when they had to order an extra 20,000,while the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City were the first Olympics to crack the 100,000 mark.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world,and postponed the Tokyo Olympics by a year,the Zika virus was the Olympic Committees’ biggest woe back in 2016,especially after US health authorities reported the first case of the virus.
Organisers in Rio,three times more than the London Games four years earlier,with 100,000 female condoms available for the first time.
About 175,000 packets of lubricant were also supplied.
A condom vending machine at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.Getty
Even at Tokyo,where athletes had to wear masks at all times,and sleep on so-called anti-sex beds (),150,000 condoms were handed out – although organisers told Reuters that “the distribution of condoms is not for use at the athletes’ village,but to have athletes take them back to their home countries to raise awareness.”
How many condoms actually get used,or which country’s athletes use the most,is anyone’s guess,but,the former goalkeeper for the US women’s soccer team,“There’s a lot of sex going on”.
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