The Olympic Village: One giant sex den?
A whole lot of lovin' goes down when you cram 10,000 of the world's fittest athletes together for three weeks straight — especially once they're done competing
The London Games are wrapping up, and reportedly, plenty of hot-bodied athletes — freed from the pressures of competing — are spending their newfound downtime having high-performance sex with each other. "Anyone who wants to be naive and say they don't know what's going on in the Village are lying to themselves," one anonymous (and grammar-challenged) gold medal-winner tells CNN. Here, a concise guide to a side of the Olympics you won't see on NBC:
What kind of antics go on?
"I've seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty," says Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the United States' women's soccer team, who estimates that 70 to 75 percent of Olympians are hooking up. The Olympic Village is intimate, after all, comprising just 3,000 apartments to accommodate over 10,000 tightly packed athletes for three weeks straight. And this isn't the first time an Olympic Village has hosted a gigantic orgy, say some athletes. American javelin thrower Breaux Greer, for instance, once boasted about having sex with three different women every day during the 2000 Games. "The athletes don't know what to expect the first time they go to the Olympics, but it just happens," says one former gold medalist in his late 30s. "As soon as you finish competing, there's no sleeping until the next day."
Why are they so sex-crazed?
"Athletes are extremists," says Solo. "When they're training, it's laser focus. When they go out for a drink, it's 20 drinks. With a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you want to build memories, whether it's sexual, partying, or on the field."
How do organizers handle it?
The International Olympic Committee has basically shrugged, stating that it "leaves it up to the discretion of each athlete, as it is a private matter." However, since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, organizers have distributed free condoms in Olympic Villages, and "in progressively copious amounts," says Bill Chappell at NPR. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example, about 100,000 condoms (sporting the Games' official motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger") were handed out. In 2012, Durex paid to be the official supplier, making 150,000 free condoms available to the London Games' athletes. (About 70,000 have reportedly disappeared from dispensers, so far.) As The Daily Beast points out, that's enough for every athlete to have sex 15 times during his or her Olympic Village residency.
Who's been spotted canoodling with whom?
It's all very hush-hush. In fact, the unofficial second motto of the Olympics, according to some athletes, is, "what happens in the Village stays in the Village." But the rumor mill has hinted at more than a few star-powered hookups: USA basketball's Kobe Bryant has been spotted with Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice (even though he's married). On Piers Morgan's TV show, Ryan Lochte admitted to having a friendly out-of-pool competition with teammate Michael Phelps: Lochte says he's winning handily 60-40. "The body types at this level are so well defined," says U.S. track runner Nick Symmonds. "It feels like the first day at college when you walk in and you’re looking around."
From the nasty streets of Camden, NJ, Jordan Burroughs fullfills his pledge to win gold. When asked by the WSJ a few weeks ago what he thought his chances to take gold were, he replied "100".
Probably the best US wrestler in at least 10 years, maybe longer.
It has been difficult for wrestling fans to follow this olympics. NBC went with water polo and beach volleyball over wrestling. Most people don't understand the sport, which is ironic, considering it is one of the oldest in existence.
From the nasty streets of Camden, NJ, Jordan Burroughs fullfills his pledge to win gold. When asked by the WSJ a few weeks ago what he thought his chances to take gold were, he replied "100".
Probably the best US wrestler in at least 10 years, maybe longer...
He was great. I watched his last two matches against the Russian and Iranian. Very tense sport with slow, balanced movements punctuated by sudden attacks, and Borroughs is very quick.
NBC went with water polo and beach volleyball over wrestling. Most people don't understand the sport, which is ironic, considering it is one of the oldest in existence.
Agreed. Vamos El Tri. Mexico played a very smart second half and deserve the win. Boo on that Rafael de Silva kid. What team would pick him? Wait a minute.
Taylor success triggers bout of below-the-belt stereotyping
We learned a lot about what the world thought of us this week.
It all began rather gorgeously. Katie Taylor, greatest living Irishwoman, and Natasha Jonas, Liverpudlian cousin of Coleen Rooney, may have hammered nine colours of manure out of one another, but Monday’s bout was remarkable for the obvious warmth that existed between the two camps.
At the close, Taylor demonstrated her immaculate manners by hugging her opponent and shaking hands with Jonas’s corner people. The enthusiastic response from the BBC’s commentators suggested the British like us almost as much as we like ourselves.
The tone soured a little on Tuesday morning. Much has been made of an article in the Age, a Melbourne-based newspaper, that included the phrase: “For centuries, Guinness and whiskey have sent the Irish off their heads.” The piece also, rather confusingly, confirmed that – a compliment, one assumes – Taylor was not “surrounded by people who’d prefer a punch to a potato”. Following representations from the Irish Ambassador, the Age offered a convincingly effusive apology.
That article was, however, somewhat less offensive than a piece that appeared the same day in USA Today. Written by one Jon Saraceno, the report on Taylor’s first victory was a small masterpiece of vulgar stereotyping and galloping inaccuracy. “Back home on the emerald-green isle, pints of Guinness flowed freely, perhaps enough to replenish the Irish Sea. The ‘punters’ inside betting parlors wagered pounds as if they were bits of candy,” Saraceno raved from his seat in Paddy McHooligan’s Shamrock Tavern.
After misidentifying the Irish currency, the journalist went on to speak of “Bray county” and describe the Irish nation as “prideful” and “scuffling”. (I speculate here myself, but I am fairly sure he also mistook The Fields of Athenry for the national anthem.) USA Today initially acknowledged only the factual errors. But, in response to questions from this newspaper, eventually apologised for any offence given.
It’s a tricky one, this. It is probably safe to assume that both the Age and USA Today felt we would be flattered by their light-hearted caricatures. After all, many Australians (not all, not most, just many; I am trying hard to mind my own language) still seem happy to be depicted as carefree, well-lubricated larrikins.
Americans of Irish descent are responsible for a great deal of the standard tropes of Paddywhackery. Domestic critics have always had a slightly uneasy relationship with John Ford’s The Quiet Man. One can, without too much intellectual wriggling, argue that Ford’s version of Ireland is no more romanticised than his depiction of the American west. By giving Ford a free pass – and by singing along to boozier Pogues numbers – we do, however, invite the likes of Saraceno to deduce that we enjoy being caricatured as crafty, gambling dipsomaniacs.
One imagines the poor Australian writer and the unfortunate American scribbler looking sadly back at us with sorrowful eyes. “But we’re on your side!”
A day later, Telegraphgate broke. In its daily digest of Olympic highlights, the unofficial organ of the Conservative party asked: “Can anyone defeat Britain’s Katie Taylor?” Twitter quaked with volcanic fury. By lunchtime, the newspaper had issued its own apology and clarified that: “She is Irish, of course.”
Is it safe to assume that Daily Telegraph journalists know the Republic is a separate country and that the busy compiler was simply confused about Taylor’s nationality? Probably. But the next – and surely most outrageous – controversy did cause one to question such comforting suppositions.
Stand up, Russell Barwick. You win the hotly contested award for ignoramus of the week. Hide your eyes, Australia. We’re back on your patch.
Speaking on Pardon the Interruption, an ESPN television show, Barwick wondered aloud – not in his head, while drunk – why Irish sportspersons did not compete for Great Britain in the Olympics.
“It’s a whole Irish joke, the whole thing. It just makes no sense,” he said before going on to engage in logic so poisonously unstable it could comfortably occupy space in a creationist tract. “It’s not like Tasmanians say they don’t want to represent Australia. You’re all part of the one mix master,” he continued.
More than a few commentators expressed amusement that an Australian – subject of a country that still has Queen Elizabeth as its head of state – seemed to believe that a nation that left the Commonwealth several lifetimes ago was still part of the United Kingdom. After a digital deluge, Barwick closed his Twitter account.
The lesson of all this is a drab and sober one. The exhaustingly charming Katie Taylor may have captured the attention of the world’s media, but most people beyond these shores know virtually nothing about us. It’s nothing personal. The average Australian could probably tell you less about the considerably more populous Kazakhstan. Few Americans know much about Uganda.
Still, it does lodge in the craw somewhat. Oh, I think I’ll let off steam with a pint and a fight.
Unpleasant to read about this kind of shit.
Q: 'How do you start free improvising?'
A: 'Well I usually start on D as a matter of fact'
"I wandered alone in the desert and cried "Oh Lord! Oh Lord! What hast thou done, lately?"
"Thought is not a saffron-robed monk pissing in the snow"
"Bitterness slowly crept into the marriage and by the time Lovborg was six years old his parents exchanged gunfire daily"
Perhaps not quite the heir apparent to the great Karelin, but close enough for now. Amazing win at age 33 in a grueling sport at the very highest level.
My impression of the closing ceremony, which I only surfed and couldn't actually sit through, was akin to kicking out a bunch of house guests who overstayed their welcome. If you're going to stay, we'll just play more and more of this music, and we have many many more copy cat bands doing covers if you insist on staying
I get the celebration and let's have a sing along & jump around aspect, but this was truly painful.
Funny when they rolled out George Michaels singing "Freedom" with his near hub-cap sized skull shaped belt buckle.
Last edited by Mike Schwartz; August-13th-2012 at 07:49 PM.
My impression of the closing ceremony, which I only surfed and couldn't actually sit through, was akin to kicking out a bunch of house guests who overstayed their welcome. If you're going to stay, we'll just play more and more of this music, and we have many many more copy cat bands doing covers if you insist on staying
I get the celebration and let's have a sing along & jump around aspect, but this was truly painful.
Funny when they rolled out George Michaels singing "Freedom" with his near hub-cap sized skull shaped bet buckle.
it was pretty much totally awful!! and, once again, all i could think of was the obscene waste of money!!
If you're going to stay, we'll just play more and more of this music, and we have many many more copy cat bands doing covers if you insist on staying
this was truly painful.
Just posted my review of it on my facebook but you pretty much condensed it down to this.
My friends back in the States told me they pretty much cut out the full footage of Lennon singing Imagine, which is the first time it's been shown.
The Muse performance (which I was informed was fortunately cut out for those in the States) of what was supposed to be the Official Olympic song sounded like a mash-up of a really bad Queen cover band doing Sinatra's My Way with different lyrics.
Can't find footage of the actual completely over the top performance, but this gives you an idea.
For those that couldn't tell....the newspapers they had lining the stage and field were literary quotes from Shakespeare, Chaucer, Austin, Dickens, etc.
P.S. Timothy Spall (as Churchill) gave an even worse reading of Caliban's lines than Branagh.
P.P.S. Have to say I was surprised no one thought of using Duran Duran's Rio as part of the handover portion to Brazil.
Last edited by Blue Train; August-14th-2012 at 02:05 AM.
"There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."
- Duke Ellington
“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
- George Bernard Shaw
"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion."
I guess this as good a place as any. The Oscar Pistorius story went from uplifting to depressing. It appears there has been a history of domestic incidents that the police had previously checked into. Probably, explains why they didn't believe it was an accident excuse that he thought she was a burglar.
Last edited by Blue Train; February-14th-2013 at 11:14 AM.
"There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind."
- Duke Ellington
“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
- George Bernard Shaw
"As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion."
Originally Posted by Blue Train
he had that colored tape on his leg.....OUCH!!
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