XXX Olympiad

Unless you’re living under a rock, you should be aware by now that the Games of the XXX Olympiad is happening right now in London. Setting aside some of the notable highlights like Mr. Bean playing a part of the famous “Chariots of Fire” soundtrack, or the badminton scandal that led to the expulsion of 8 women athletes from the Games, or the fact that the Philippines has yet to end its 16-year medal drought, the most interesting story about the Games that I have read by far is this piece on ESPN about the raucous sex that happens at the Olympic Village.

Well, what do you expect when you put together a bunch of young very healthy and fit athletes full of energy far from home into a single location? Well, lot’s of physical exercise on the bed (and even off it). You could lose in the court but win some in the bedroom. Here are some highlights from the article:

Quickly the reality sinks in that the village is “just a magical, fairy-tale place, like Alice in Wonderland, where everything is possible,” says Carrie Sheinberg, an alpine skier at the ’94 Winter Games and a reporter for subsequent Olympics. “You could win a gold medal and you can sleep with a really hot guy.”

By the eve of the closing ceremonies, all of the events have wrapped, all bets are off and the home team often hosts one hell of a party. That was certainly the case in Sydney, where Australia’s baseball and women’s soccer teams threw a joint bash complete with a massive bonfire. “Who knew the village furniture could burn so well,” kids Alicia Ferguson, an Aussie footballer. “We did involve the fire wardens, who were very accommodating, and then we started hooking up around our very own Olympic Village bonfire.”

And is there same-sex action? ESPN hints at some:

At the 1976 Montreal Games, three-time Olympic diver and four-time gold medalist Greg Louganis [ed: he came out of the closet in 1995 during an interview with Oprah], appearing in his first Olympics at age 16, developed a kinship with the boys on the Soviet Union diving team and soon found himself partying in their rooms. “Once events were over, our entire diet was caviar, vodka and Russian champagne. It was crazy,” Louganis says. He was particularly struck by the Russians’ sense of sexual liberation. “Culturally, they’re more openly affectionate toward each other, which I just drank up, since I was still discovering who I was. But I had my eyes on one Soviet. I’d curl up in his lap; we’d hug and cuddle. I felt so protected.” It didn’t progress beyond that, Louganis says. “He was hooking up with one of the other male divers on the team” — not to mention married.

What about during the 2012 London Olympics? Well, the servers of the hugely popular gay hookup app Grindr crashed at about the same time athletes were arriving. This led to tabloid speculation that gay Olympic athletes overloaded the service although Grindr says that it was all just a coincidence:

“While we’d love to believe that the best-built men in the world all dressed up in Lycra and congregating in one place can generate a huge increase in Grindr traffic, we can say with confidence that the arrival of the Olympic teams had little or no effect on our server. The truth is that there are many factors that cause a technological service disruption.”

Finally here’s some athletic eye candy, er, sausage....

The hunk above is Swedish decathlete Björn Barrefors. Unfortunately he’s not in the London Olympics. But, see more brief-dropping pictures of him.