PARIS:In the City of Love, amour is in the air, as Paris 2024 is enjoying some steamy weather in the first week of the Summer Games. With restrictions like the Covid times off, there is no intimacy ban this time like Tokyo 2020.
The Paris 2024 Games organisers are very well prepared to meet the onslaught of many free-mixing and fun-loving athletes, who are at the peak of their mental and physical health with plenty of adrenaline and heart-pounding moments expected on and off-the-pitch.
The Olympic Games Village, about the size of 70 football fields and split by the River Siene and joined by a bridge to link the accommodation blocks, is the single biggest project of Paris 2024.
Around Euro 2 Billion have been spent on the Village, but it has largely been funded by private investors.
The Village Club there is the single biggest ‘hook-up point’ for more than 10,000 athletes from across the world at Paris. And love is always in the air with athletes constantly around each other all day, socialising, working out and sweating in close proximity to each other.
Once someone gets a whiff of these pheromones, the sexual urge is manifold. Several athletes have said that sex is inevitable especially when almost all athletes “want to release energy,” sometimes with disastrous consequences.
On Tuesday, a Brazilian swimmer was kicked out the Games village for crossing the line. Ana Carolina Vieira, 22, went out with her boyfriend, fellow swimmer Gabriel Santos, on July 26 after both failed to qualify in their respective events, the 4 x 100m freestyle relay. But inside the Village, there is no such punishment.
Cardboard beds at the Games Village, sturdy enough to support 250 kgs of weight, have apparently withstood the ‘anti-sex test’ with several athletes checking them out with some rigorous running on the spot, somersaulting, stomping and handstand bounces.
Anticipating that intimacy could peak during the Games, about 200,000 male condoms, 20,000 females and 10,000 oral (dental) dams are available, about two each for every day of the Games!
Safe sex is being propounded by the organisers, who feel the environment can be extremely febrile like college days! Condoms have been distributed freely at the Games since the 1980s.
Branding and innovative messages on condom packets have left the athletes blushing. The Phryges, the official mascots of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, feature on the packets that are distributed in every room. Phrases such as, 'On the field of love, play fair. Ask for consent', 'Don’t share more than victory, protect yourself against STDs', and 'No need to be a gold medallist to wear it!' are explicit enough.
What goes inside the village and between the sheets remain a closely-guarded matter. But some athletes have revealed balmy details of ‘affairs’ inside the Village rooms. At Rio 2016, Brazilian diver Ingrid Oliveira was alleged to have 'banished' her team-mate from their Olympic Village room - which she later denied.
Ingrid has been quoted in the Sun, saying: “I took Pedro (Goncalves) to my room, but it wasn’t the day before my dive as has been reported or the day before his competition…People don’t know, but in the Olympics it’s normal.”
But the biggest revelation came when it was revealed that sprint king Usain Bolt flirted with a Brazilian student Jady Duarte before sneaking her into the Olympic Village by dodging the usually tight security.
The student revealed everything afterwards, including how she was wooed by a naked dance to Rihanna song 'Work', before making love on his single bed. Jady had told The Sun: "Usain was an Olympic champion in the bedroom. I thought we had something going. But now I can see that he picks up women as quickly as he picks up gold medals."
In his autobiography, British long jumper Greg Rutherford admitted he was stunned by the sexual antics that go on at major athletics events, saying: "I was staggered by just how many people got absolutely smashed and the bedroom-hopping that took place."
But the Olympics are not always about debauchery. It’s not always about winning gold, silver or bronze. There are many who met under the five rings and tied the knot. The most famous among them are Roger Federer and his wife Mirka. They met at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 while representing Switzerland in tennis. Roger and Mirka married in 2009. And that’s one of the many love stories forged at the Olympics!