Eco-friendly, vegan-first mentality is damaging Paris Olympics

The lack of world record swims in Paris boils down to the eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance, writes JAMES MAGNUSSEN.

The village cafeterias ran out of meat and dairy in the opening days. Picture: Getty Images

The Olympic Games are about trying to get the perfect performance in the most imperfect environment.

There are so many extenuating circumstances that make the Olympic Games the hardest environment to perform at your best.

We’ve already heard the likes of Ariarne Titmus talk about how difficult life is in the village, so we can’t dismiss those complaints as an athlete whining because they didn’t win gold.

There’s multiple factors that make village life far from ideal.

It’s the cardboard beds, which can’t give you optimal sleep.

It’s the no airconditioning, which is going to play a bigger factor as the week goes. It was 20 degrees and raining yesterday. It’s going to be mid 30s in the coming days.

That’s going to play a factor and the Australian team having their own portable air conditioners will be a welcome relief.

It’s the crowded buses with no air flow. It’s all of the walking everywhere. The one thing we noticed in London was I was getting up to 6000-7000 steps a day, going from my room, to the food hall, to the bus stop, to the pool.

Olympic athletes have spoken about how difficult life is in the village. Picture: Getty Images

The cardboard beds in the athletes village don’t provide for optimal sleep. Picture: Adam Head

When you’re at home, you wake up, go downstairs, drive to the pool, drive back home, go back upstairs, so you don’t get those kilometres in the legs.

You add those extenuating circumstances of village life on top of that layer of pressure and expectation in a nation like Australia, it’s actually amazing that athletes can manage to perform at their best or break world records at an Olympic Games.

From our sample size thus far, this Olympics is showing that it may be one of the toughest environments we’ve seen to produce world record swims.

The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance.

They had a charter that said 60 per cent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones.

The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets.

It’s actually amazing that athletes can manage to perform at their best or break world records at an Olympic Games Picture: Adam Head

They must have watched the Netflix doco Game Changers and assumed everyone was the same. But let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.

It seemed Paris wanted to be eco first, performance second at the Games.

I don’t know if that’s a political stance, or if it’s a cost stance, but I think in the future we need to look to other options because the Olympics is the pinnacle sporting event in the world.

These athletes train their entire career to perform at their best on this stage, and to try and do so from cardboard beds is just suboptimal.

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For athletes like Ariarne to come out and win gold medals under those circumstances, it makes them even greater.

I think in the future, at Brisbane 2032, they should look at whether a village is an ideal environment to host an Olympic Games from a real estate perspective, a geographical perspective, a cost perspective, and a facility wise perspective.

Some time in the future a host nation or an IOC will look at hotels as a feasible alternative to an Olympic Village, particularly if results don’t improve at these Games.

Originally published as Eco-friendly, vegan-first mentality is damaging Paris Olympics