Australia’s gold medal swimmers sleeping better than the rest in the controversial Olympic athlete village

They say pre-planning is key, and for the Australian swim team, the organisation has paid off with a covert athletes village smuggling effort helping our golden trio to glory…and some shut eye.

They say the greatest preparation for athletic performance is a good night’s sleep, so it’s understandable that complaints have been coming thick and fast in Paris from those competitors with bleary eyes.

Earlier this week James Magnussen said on the ‘Matty and the Missile in Paris’ podcast that athletes were “fed up with the facilities”, specifically the bedding.

“We haven’t had this amount of complaints about a Village in Olympic history,” Magnussen said.

Co-host Matty Johns replied “people have trained so hard for four years, they turn up here and they’re sleeping on cardboard beds. It’s just ridiculous.”

Yet never fear, some old-fashioned Aussie lateral thinking has found a solution through an individual sponsorship as practical as running spikes or swimming togs.

And it’s a solution with a perfect three-from-three gold medal record in a sport where millimetres decide glory.

Gold medallists Mollie O'callaghan and Emma Mckeon opted for the smuggled Tempur mattress. Picture: Manan VATSYAYANA / AFP

CODE Sports can reveal that Tempur mattresses’ Australian office, in anticipation of what might be found in Paris, three weeks ago delivered three premium mattresses to the Village for three Australian swimmers.

Their names? Emma McKeon, Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus.

All are gold medalists thus far in Paris.

Managing Director of Tempur Australia, Jason Nicholas, confirms that the ‘smuggling’ of the mattresses occurred.

“In each county I know who the Managing Directors are, so I rang my colleagues in Paris ahead of the Games and organised a delivery. It’s a bit complex to get them in, but we worked it out,” he told CODE Sports.

McKeon and O’Callaghan each have personal sponsorship deals with Tempur so the same mattress they sleep on at home arrived at the Village.

After helping those two, Nicholas reached out directly to Titmus on Instagram who gladly accepted the offer, having the same mattress at home via her personal sponsorship with Harvey Norman.

“The frustrating thing from people I’ve spoken to is that we spend all this money preparing athletes to go over there.. and they’re sleeping on boxes,” Nicholas says.

The twist in the tale is that a fourth mattress turned up a few days prior to the arrival of the swimmers.

It seems an official already ensconced in the Village went down with a bad back and was in desperate need of a comfortable night’s sleep and grabbed one of those already delivered.

The extra arrival replaced the one ‘borrowed’ from our golden trio.

Originally published as Australia’s gold medal swimmers sleeping better than the rest in the controversial Olympic athlete village