Olympic athletes in Milan went through 10,000 condoms in three days
Is it time for the Olympics to add a new sport to its program?
Well, that didn’t take long. A report in Italian newspaper La Stampa says that the supply of free condoms provided to Olympic athletes in Milan has been depleted.
“The supplies ran out in just three days,” an anonymous and urgent-sounding athlete told the publication. “They promised us more will arrive, but who knows when.”
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The newspaper compared the total number of condoms provided to past Olympic games. “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.”
According to the Guardian, about 3,000 athletes are competing in the Milano Cortina Olympics. That means there were 3.3 condoms per athlete, which were put to use over a three-day period.
“It may be the Winter Games,” said La Stampa‘s report, “but the temperature in Cortina is scorching.”
Imagine training your whole life to make it to the Olympics and receiving such a meagre allotment of protection? This is no way to treat the world’s most dedicated athletes, who shouldn’t have to scour Italian pharmacies in order to win the most coveted prize of all: safely hooking up with a random speed skater in a cumbersome dormitory situation.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
