On Valentine’s Day at the Milan Cortina Olympics, a renewed supply of free condoms for the athlete villages was promised by the organizers after going short during the week.
“We can confirm that condom supplies in the Olympic Villages were temporarily depleted due to higher-than-anticipated demand,” the Italian organizing committee said in a statement Saturday. “Additional supplies are being delivered and will be distributed across all villages between today and Monday.”
Providing condoms for athletes has been a gift from organizers — and a constant fascination to the world — for decades.
While 300,000 condoms were provided for more than 10,500 athletes at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, the original stock was much lower for these Winter Games.
“I think 10,000 have been used, 2,800 athletes — you can go figure, as they say,” International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said Saturday. “It clearly shows that Valentine’s Day is in full swing in the village.”
Reports of no condoms in week one of the games followed an absence of plush toys of the official mascots, Milo and Tina, in the opening days. They proved more popular than expected in the official Olympics merchandise stores.
Condoms are traditionally popular for Olympic athletes to take home as “a kind of gift” to friends, Alpine skier Mialitiana Clerc said Saturday.
“I’m not so shocked. I saw it in Beijing already,” said Clerc, who also competed for Madagascar four years ago at the Winter Games in China. “There were some boxes with a lot of condoms at the entrance of every building where we were staying at the village.”
“Every day, everything was (gone),” she recalled about Beijing at an IOC news conference Saturday to promote its scholarship program that helps hundreds of athletes to train and qualify for the Olympics.
“I already know that a lot of people are using some condoms or just taking them to give to their friends outside of the Olympics because it’s a kind of gift for them,” Clerc said.
There should be no further shortage in Italy until the Winter Games closing ceremony on Feb. 22.
“They will be continuously replenished until the end of the games to ensure continued availability,” the local organizing committee said.