The bedroom Olympics: After-dark antics in the athletes’ village

Sex in the laundry, thirsty groupies and perfect bodies as far as the eye can see. Welcome to the athletes’ village after dark.

The grit and gusto isn’t just being displayed in the arena at the Olympics, it’s also being expended in the bedroom.

“The athletes’ village is a bizarre utopia where everyone’s tall, beautiful and perfect with amazing bodies and virile and full of energy and endurance and strength,” says retired gold medal diver Matthew Mitcham about the hedonistic melting pot that houses the sports stars.

The city of love has become the city of lust as the Games plays out.

And it seems everyone in town is ogling the real-life works of art who have descended on the French capital to compete.

Tinder reports a 52 per cent spike in the number of Paris users with “Olympian” as their job descriptions, and a 43 per cent rise in those who list “athlete” on their profile. Swipe rates are up 25 per cent.

Paris is teeming with ‘tall, beautiful and perfect’ bodies — and the athletes’ village is ground zero. Picture: Alamy

Queer hook-up app Grindr has installed restrictions that stop everyday people from being able to find athlete profiles in the village.

“That’s because of thirsty queens in the outside world desperately trying to bonk an athlete inside the village,” says Mitcham, who competed in two Olympics and brought home the gold from Beijing in 2008.

At gay bar Cox in Le Marais, the rainbow decorated neighbourhood of Paris, a group of these thirsty queens is scrolling Grindr on a Friday night. One of the blokes explains they’re hoping to spot an athlete in the grid of pretty faces on their phone screens.

“It’s a conquest,” he says.

Mitcham, who’s in Paris as an ambassador for queer safe space Pride House and Olympic partner Airbnb, has disappointing news for them: most of the athletes aren’t interested in groupies.

“Athletes definitely just wanna bonk athletes,” he says.

“The Olympic village is a smorgasbord. You’ve got every possible shape and size and ethnicity.

There’s a flurry of extra activity on dating apps in Paris right now — but it’s bad news for groupies.

“Everyone just loves who’s the best or hot or Instagram famous or TikTok famous. Athletes are just as big a star f**kers as everybody else.”

Australian 3x3 basketballer Marena Whittle says “there’s a shift” in the village now many of the athletes have finished their finals. The Games is past the halfway point and athletes are ready to blow off steam.

“The co-mingling is real,” she says.

“Everyone’s talking about the closing ceremony because after that it’s going to be absolutely crazy. I can already see how hectic it’s going to be just based on what the village is like right now.”

The infamous ‘anti-sex’ cardboard beds in the village have forced amorous athletes to get creative. Picture: Maja Hitij/Getty Images

She went out bar hopping around Paris with her team on Sunday night following their loss to Canada in the quarterfinals. The ladies returned to the village at 2am to find athletes were wide awake and engaging in antics.

With shared rooms and eco-friendly cardboard beds in the village, Mitcham says sport stars looking to get more familiar with each other are left with no other choice but to find unconventional places to hook-up.

“There’s sex happening in the laundry room and the basements of the buildings,” he recalls of the spots that are usually deemed “neutral territory”.

Though this year, in Paris, it seems clothes are the only things getting tumbled next to the washing machines.

“With the laundry in the village here, there’s always someone watching it and it shuts – they’ve got very strict hours,” Whittle says. “But in our village we’ve got so many hidden little spots – there’s a bridge, an underpass … lots of areas that people can take full advantage of.”

Paris’ red light district isn’t seeing as much of the action. Picture: Artur Widak / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP

As a last resort, and with some discretion and scheduling, Whittle says the dorm rooms and their cardboard beds can also be an option if times get desperate.

“You could do a backflip and land and the bed wouldn’t break,” she says.

But not everyone in the city is getting lucky during the Games. Down in Rue Saint-Denis, the red light district of Paris that’s famous for its peep shows and sex workers who line the streets, the bonking isn’t booming.

“Business is little,” one lady in shiny black PVC knee-high boots and a threadbare red negligee says while waiting in an empty alleyway for a customer.

Usually she’d be making 600 euros a pop but, on this Wednesday evening, her winged eyeliner seems to have been pencilled on her tired face for no one.

Down the alleyway, two more ladies lean against the graffitied wall, bored and restless, impatiently tapping their chunky heels on the pavement.

‘The Olympics has been bad for business,’ one worker in the red light district says. Picture: Artur Widak / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP

A worker at Le Bus des Femmes, an association that assists sex workers on the streets of Rue Saint-Denis, says the regular clientele of many of the girls have left town to escape the city chaos during the Games. She also blames the event for keeping away curious tourists who’d usually pay for the ladies’ services.

“The Olympics has been bad for business,” she says.

All the action, it seems, is happening in the athletes’ village – an environment Mitcham compares to an American frat house. Coming into these final days of the competition, as finals wrap and athletes relax, that’s when things really get wild.

“When you’re competing, you’re a robot. You don’t do anything else that wastes extra energy. Any bonking that does happen happens after one’s competition.”

So, do the 300,000 condoms that have been provided in the village all get used?

“A lot of them will be used as balloons. Some will be used as face stockings to make you look like Noddy with his hat on,” Mitcham says. “And then, of course, there’s some sex. People are literally there to go out and get f**ked up.”

Facebook: @hellojamesweir