How the woke Olympic Village is ending any world-record hopes
After years of dedication and sacrifice, the least Olympic athletes deserved in Paris this summer was adequate facilities to help fuel their quests for glory. Instead, they've been greeted by quite the opposite. Over the weekend USA tennis star Coco Gauff revealed her entire team have become the latest athletes to flee an Olympic Village which seems to be doing more harm than good almost one week into the 2024 Games.
Gauff, 20, posted a candid TikTok video that exposed the shocking conditions Olympians are enduring inside the brand new $1.6 billion facility, with the US Open champion forced to share a bathroom with 10 of her compatriots before five of them packed up and left. America's female tennis stars are not the first athletes to walk out on the Olympic Village this summer, and given the wide range of complaints flooding in they are unlikely to be the last, either. Organizers at the Paris Games were determined to make this Olympics the most sustainable of all time, prioritizing a green approach in almost every area.
However, this aggressive focus on being eco-friendly has resulted in appalling conditions for competitors striving for greatness in the French capital, meaning world records have been few and far between so far. Every room is without air conditioning, leading to uncomfortably stuffy temperatures, while they are all equipped with bog-standard cardboard beds. US gymnast Frederick Richard was even forced to ship his own mattress to the village in Paris because the beds on offer are so deficient. 'Everyone's complaining about beds and stuff,' he said last week. 'I ordered my bed already, shipped it here. I had a comfy bed from the start.'
Those who didn't think ahead like Richard have no choice but to rest on cardboard while chasing their Olympic dreams. And if a hot and painful night's sleep isn't bad enough, the food on offer to athletes is said to be 60 percent vegan, coming as a huge difficulty to those who live by meat-based diets to get themselves in peak physical condition. And to make matters worse, the Olympic Village was hit by a food shortage just one day after the opening ceremony.
French publication L'Equipe reported that vital items such as eggs and grilled meats had to be rationed out at breakfast on Saturday, with some lodging complaints over their measly portions. The shortage of eggs was believed to be the biggest concern given they form a crucial part of most athletes' diets due to having high protein and good fats, as well as various nutrients and minerals. These dire conditions are stifling Olympic stars in their bid to go down in history, with retired Australian swimmer James Magnussen taking a swipe at Paris chiefs for damaging the quality on the show.
'The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance,' Magnussen said. 'They had a charter that said 60 percent 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.'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.'
More still, there is no VIP treatment for athletes when making their way to events, either. Public transport must be used when heading off to stadiums, arenas, velodromes and more, meaning competitors will have already carried out hot and busy commutes before they arrive for the Games. Six South Korean swimmers have left the Olympic Village and moved into a hotel near the swimming arena to avoid the long commute in hot buses, the Korea Swimming Federation (KSF) president said.
KSF president Chong Chang-hoon said the swimmers on the men's 4x200-meter freestyle relay team moved into a hotel that is a five-minute walk from Paris La Defense Arena, where the swimming events will be held. Chong received complaints that the buses the swimmers used to travel to the arena had no air-conditioning while the windows were taped shut. The Olympic Village is nearly 12 km away from the swimming arena. 'We just want to make sure they will be at least a bit more comfortable,' Chong said.
Australia's queen of the pool Ariarne Titmus (pictured) may well have benefitted from a similar change, after the three-time swimming gold medalist unleashed on the 'ridiculous' conditions she believes thwarted her bid to set a world record. 'It probably wasn't the time I thought I was capable of, but living in the Olympic Village makes it hard to perform,' Titmus admitted in an interview on Sunday.
'It's definitely not made for high performance, so it's about who can really keep it together in the mind.' As we reach the business end of the Games, more and more athletes are likely to flee the village in order to boost their chances of victory in the French capital. The residential complex for this summer's Olympics could be a ghost town by the time it draws to a close.
