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Tuesday, Mar 2, 2010 4:03 PM UTC

Another Olympics, another 100,000 condoms

The 2010 Vancouver games are over, but the athletes sure did leave a lot of wrappers in their wake

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Topics: Winter Olympics 2010, Broadsheet, Sex, Love and Sex,

Another Winter Olympics has come and gone. The torch has been extinguished, the ice skates packed up, the giant beaver costumes presumably stolen by wily Canadian teenagers. And Vancouverites have been left with a heap of medals, an enormous Molson’s-fueled hangover, and, over at Olympic Village, over 125,000 condom wrappers. Maybe it’s all that ice, or just the thrill of victory, but it seemed like the real action this year happened off the rink.

Canada’s National Post reported last week that the supply of 100,000 free condoms distributed to about 7,000 athletes and officials had been dangerously depleted. That’s right: 14 free condoms per person? Not enough! Either there were some serious water balloon fights, or the athletes in Vancouver were champions in the sack as well as on the ice. An emergency shipment of another 25,000 johnnies sped its way to Vancouver, courtesy of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS research. Rocketing down icy slopes must be pretty good for the libido.

And let’s not forget the other champions of risque behavior this year: The Daily Mail awarded its gold medal for smuttiness to Norwegian cross-country skier Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset, who blamed a lackluster showing on the slopes on his porn-watching habit. Scotty Lago, the U.S. snowboarder who was sent home after racy pictures surfaced of him online, won bronze in his event but took home the silver for scandal. And, of course, German curler Melanie Robillard, who posed topless for a calendar before the games. It just goes to show that Olympic athletes also have Olympic-sized libidos. And, as Canadian skier Emily Brydon commented to The Telegraph, “What happens in Olympic Village, stays in Olympic Village.”

 

Margaret Eby is an editorial fellow at Salon. More Margaret Eby.

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