LONDON 2012 this is guaranteed to set at least one Olympic record: organisers Locog will give away 150,000 free condoms to athletes, more than at any previous Games. As the condoms will be distributed in the athletes’ village, the assumption must be that most of them will be used by the athletes themselves, presumably in liaisons with other athletes in the “closed” village.
On that basis, Locog’s provisions appear to expect that the 10,000 competitors will each use 15 condoms in a fortnight. At 30 condoms per “couple”, that equates to every competitor having sex twice a day, every day for the fortnight’s duration of the Games.
The Olympics have been described as a “sex fest” by former British table tennis star Matthew Syed, who says that at the 1992 Games in Barcelona he “got laid more often in those two and a half weeks than in the rest of my life up to that point”.
Syed, who went to two Games as a competitor and others as a writer-commentator, has said it is common to see eliminated athletes “shagging like crazy” at the Olympics, adding: “Most of the athletes I know are as up for it before and during competition as they are in the aftermath.”
Some famous romances have begun at a Games: Roger Federer met his wife, Mirka, in the Sydney Olympics athletes’ village, for example. Others focus on shorter-term kicks. Former US double-gold swimmer Nelson Diebel once said the Games is “a two-week-long private party for thousands of hard bodies”, while compatriot javelin thrower Breaux Greer said: “There’s a lot of sex going on. Testosterone’s up and everybody’s attracted to everybody.”
Free condoms for athletes at Olympics began in 1992 when supplies – in the tens of thousands – ran out. At Sydney 2000, 70,000 were used, then a record 130,000 in Athens in 2004. Locog, with 150,000, evidently expect a sexy summer. – Daily Mail