Just three days into Winter Olympics, athletes say village has run out of condoms

Just three days into the Winter Olympics, competitors are already complaining. Not about mismanagement or lack of facilities, but about free condoms!

Italian newspaper La Stampa said the Games village has already run out of free condoms. It quoted an unnamed athlete as saying that the sportspersons have been promised new supplies will come, “but who knows when”.

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The athlete said Olympic organisers should have been generous with numbers.

“In Paris the athletes received 300,000 condoms – two per day each – but the numbers for these Winter Games were significantly lower: not even 10,000,” the report in La Stampa states the athlete as saying.

While the Summer Olympics at Paris saw some 10,500 athletes participating, only 3,000 are competing in Italy.

Attilio Fontana, the Governor of the Lombardy region, had last week posted on social media, “Yes, we provide free condoms to athletes in the Olympic village. If this seems strange to some, they’re unaware of the established Olympic practice. It began in Seoul 1988 to raise awareness among athletes and young people about sexually transmitted disease prevention — a topic that shouldn’t cause embarrassment.”

Apart from condoms, the organisers have arranged many other activities to keep athletes busy in the Olympic village. These include a large gym, table football, air hockey games, piano etc. Of course, there is no shortage of food and soft drinks.