For the second straight Summer Olympics, organizers seem to be doing what they can to keep athletes’ cardio solely on the playing surface.
As competitors arrive at Paris’ Olympic Village prior to the 2024 Summer Games, they’ll become acclimated to “anti-sex” twin-size beds crafted from cardboard frames created by Japanese manufacturer Airweave.
Given their limited surface area and thinner polyethylene mattress material, many perceived the beds to be a concerted effort at discouraging sex among competitors.
However, modified sleeping spaces may not actually mean a lack of lasciviousness.
Airweave’s chief operating officer Brett Thornton told The Post in May that the beds’ frames are “designed far sturdier than typical wooden bed frames,” although didn’t explicitly link nor encourage sexual activity on the company’s products.
Once athletes got to France in late July, they promptly tested whether the beds’ flimsiness was fact or fiction — and seemed pleasantly surprised with the results.
Both male and female competitors in a variety of sports posted videos on social media revealing the beds could withstand relatively strenuous athletic activity, including stomping, somersaults and handstands.
“Fake news!” exclaimed Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan in an Instagram video.
The arrival of the beds during the Tokyo Games in 2021 coincided with an “intimacy ban” rooted in social distancing due to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.
But now, it seems as if Olympic officials are changing their tune — to a more sensual one.
2024 PARIS OLYMPICS
According to Laurent Michaud, director of the Paris Olympic Village, this year’s athletes will have 300,000 condoms available at their disposal.
“We want to create some places where the athletes will feel very enthusiastic and comfortable so they can have some conversations, discussions and to share their core values about sports,” Michaud said.
Olympians across decades have reinforced that sparks fly frequently when the athletic world descends upon one city for nearly a month.
“I’ve seen people having sex right out in the open,” Hope Solo, a two-time American gold medalist, told ESPN in 2012. “On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty.”
Ultimately, though, the focus is on competition — and that’s what Airweave’s beds are designed to optimize.
By utilizing artificial intelligence scans to determine body types, athletes will receive customized mattresses with three distinct blocks based on degrees of firmness.
With the opening ceremony beginning on July 26 and Olympians already making themselves at home in Paris, it might be only a matter of time before the beds’ moniker is put to the test.
