It’s easy to let your imagination run wild when picturing life inside the Olympic Village, where more than 10,000 of the world’s fittest people are confined for the duration of the games. Stories about the Village running out of condoms, for instance, are now the stuff of legend.
In a new YouTube video, former pro runner and two-time Olympian Nick Symmonds provided something of a reality check, describing what his own experience was like while competing in the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing and the 2012 games in London.
“When I entered the village for the first time it was so surreal. It’s walled off, it’s secure, you have to go through security. Once you’re inside, it’s very peaceful and you feel protected and set away,” Symmonds says, adding that it’s not always easy to tell which athletes compete in which sports, and it’s fun to guess. One exception, he noted, was a chance encounter with swimming legend Michael Phelps, who happened to be staying in his dorm.
Speaking of those apartments, they aren’t quite what most people might expect, Symmonds says. “You’re staying in a tiny room similar to a dorm room. Two beds, you’ve got a roommate, maybe a tiny dresser for your stuff. They’re very sparse and simple,” he says, noting that the Tokyo Games are even rumored to be using cardboard furniture to discourage Olympians from sleeping with one another. (More on that in a moment.)
For the most part, Symmonds says, it’s all business—for him, anyway: You’re there to compete, and you’ve spent years—if not decades—preparing for this moment. Until, that is, you’ve completed your events, and then it’s all about the celebration. That means the athletes who go first, such as the swimmers, tend to have the most time to relax and let loose.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Symmonds, seeing as track & field athletes are on the back end of the competition. “The village gets progressively louder and louder as more people finish. The swimmers let you know they were finished competing. They partied so hard, I remember,” he says, which made it all the more difficult to rest and stay focused for his own events.
That’s also why during the 2012 games, Symmonds says, he rented an apartment away from the village and only went in during the last two days of events. As for all the supposed hookups taking place inside those walls, Symmonds says his experience wasn’t exactly a condom-fueled bacchanalia.
“For this bison, that never happened. I was there to compete,” he says. “The men’s 800 was at the back end of the games. I was focused. As soon as competition was over, I was out of there and on to the next. I never hooked up in the village, unfortunately—I was there to get my job done and that’s exactly what I did.”
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