Olympic village shenanigans

Olympic village shenanigans
 
"In winter the Canadians win gold, not only for exuberance but also because they have a national beer company, Molson, that routinely delivers liquid supplies. Edith Thys, an American skier at Calgary and Albertville, agrees that the partying gold should probably go to the Canadians, but she awards the licentiousness medal to the French. "They are by far the most promiscuous," says Thys, "but only with each other. I’m not sure if that’s because they wouldn’t sleep with anybody else, or because nobody else would sleep with them." ......................
 
The arrival of money and athletes, and the sponsors and businessmen who swarm around them, also supports a very old industry - which is why a union called the Movement of Greek Prostitutes is protesting against Athens’ new "unrealistic" zoning laws restricting legal brothels from operating within 200m of various public buildings. "If the laws don’t change," says the group’s head, Dimitra Kanelopoulou, "prostitutes are going to flood the streets, topless and in heels. What a great image for the Olympics." Not that laws - or fences - have ever curbed the profession. In Sydney, three prostitutes were found in the Olympic village itself, the Miami Herald reported, after being signed in as guests by "an employee of a major American television network". .........................
 
"Every athlete who goes to the Games is intimately familiar with what a life of training and genetic culling does to people in his sport," says Terry Kent, an American Olympic kayaker who competed in LA, Seoul and Barcelona. "Everybody has been trying to achieve a freak-of-nature status just a little bit more extreme than the next guy. But when you’re thrown into the village you are suddenly confronted with a cornucopia of ultra-honed bodies twisted by the demands of sport." Kent remembers sitting in the village, watching athletes walk through the door and playing a game of Guess What They Do. "The bikers have skinny little upper bodies, farmer tans and massive, clean-shaven thighs. Invert them and you get the kayakers, who have skinny little legs and massive backs and shoulders. The seven-foot-tall giant who ducks under the doorway entering the cafeteria is probably from basketball. The seven-foot giant who smacks his head on the door frame is definitely a rower; they don’t have that hand-eye co-ordination thing. The kids running at the rowers’ ankles with the high-pitched voices are gymnasts. It just goes on and on. Being at the village is like taking your place in a wild anatomical parade seen nowhere else on the planet."   ........................
 
Dick Roth remembers Tokyo in the 1960s, a time before sex studies and internet hook-ups - and yet still very much alive. "It was a lot more innocent back then," he says, "but not only did I see it, I participated in it. You’ve been working so hard, and everybody is so in the absolute prime of life, and everyone looks so good. This was before the sexual revolution, and it was discreet. But it was happening." Then he pauses for a moment. "I know I have to be careful when I talk to a journalist, but I can say this: It wasn’t the f**k-fest it is now."