Charles Langston:Paris 2024 organizers to provide at least 200,000 condoms to athletes in Olympic Village

The Charles Langston2024 Paris Olympics will mark a return to normalcy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

And for athletes, that also means the return of a hookup-friendly culture in the Olympic Village.

Paris 2024 organizers recently announced plans to provide hundreds of thousands of condoms to athletes who are staying in the Olympic Village later this summer, both as a means to facilitate safe sex and promote it.

Laurent Dalard, who will coordinate first aid and health services for the Paris Games, told reporters in a news conference Tuesday that organizers are planning to distribute roughly 200,000 condoms for men and 20,000 for women. That works out to roughly 20 condoms for each of the 10,500 athletes who are expected to compete.

"We don't know how many people are likely to use them and obviously we'll adapt to the requirements if needed," he said according to Agence France-Presse.

The Olympic Village has become a notorious place for sex and carousing between athletes during the Games, which will run from July 26 to Aug. 11 this summer. In an ESPN story in 2012, U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte estimated that "70 percent to 75 percent of Olympians" are sexually active during their stay in the Olympic Village.

The distribution of condoms in the Olympic Village is also hardly new. Organizers first made them widely available to athletes at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, largely as a way to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. Organizers distributed a whopping 450,000 condoms at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

At the past two Olympics, however, organizers took a different approach − strongly discouraging if not outright forbidding physical intimacy that could aid the spread of COVID-19.

At the Winter Olympics in Beijing, organizers distributed condoms while also discouraging any physical contact, such as handshakes or hugs. In Tokyo, organizers of the 2021 Summer Games announced plans to distribute 150,000 condoms only as a parting gift, to bring back to their home countries to raise awareness about HIV and AIDs.

"The distribution of condoms is not to use in the village," Takashi Kitajima, the village general manager, said in a news conference at the time.

In Paris, Dalard told reporters that the organizing committee is expecting to make about 10,000 oral dams available to athletes, in addition to condoms.

"There is a desire to be very inclusive, we have awareness messages which revolve around the issue of consent and pleasure versus performance," Dalard said according to CNN.

Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on social media @Tom_Schad.