What Athletes Have Said About Hooking Up in the Olympic Village Through the Years

Hope Solo, Ryan Lochte. Getty Images (2) Every two years, the summer or winter Olympics bring together the best athletes in the world to compete in the same city and live in the same Olympic village. They're usually 20-somethings in peak physical fitness, forced into close proximity amid a high-stress, high-stakes environment. It's ripe for extracurricular activities. In fact, People reports that 300,000 condoms have been distributed at the 2024 Paris Olympics in anticipation of such activities. That averages out to about 30 condoms per athlete. When the 2026 Winter Games came around in Italy, the LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr made adjustments to accommodate athletes who are either not out or from countries where being queer is dangerous or illegal. That includes disabling its explore and roam features inside the village to prevent anyone outside from seeing which athletes were on it. All of the Must-See Photos From the 2024 Paris Olympics The Olympic village's long, storied history of hooking up dates back to at least the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where diver Greg Louganis commented on Team Russia's "sense of sexual liberation." "Culturally, they're more openly affectionate toward each other, which I just drank up, since I was still discovering who I was," he recalled in a 2012 ESPN exposé about the topic. "But I had my eyes on one Soviet. I'd curl up in his lap; we'd hug and cuddle. I felt so protected...

He was hooking up with one of the other male divers on the team." By 1988, the Olympic Association had to ban outdoor sex after officials kept finding condoms on the roofs in the Olympic village in Seoul. 1992 Olympic swimmer Summer Sanders is credited with the motto "what happens in the village stays in the village," but it turns out that's not always the case. Keep scrolling for just some of the athletes who have opened up about hooking up at the Olympics. How to Eat and Sleep Like an Olympian: Inside the Athletes' Village Adam Rippon Adam Rippon Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images Figure skater Adam Rippon admitted that there is significantly less hooking up during the Winter Olympics in a 2025 appearance on Kelly Stafford's "The Morning After" podcast. "Summer and Winter are totally different beasts," he explained. "It's like double the amount of athletes in a Summer Games. It's also warm and everybody's hot and naked. In the winter, the most revealing outfit outside of the figure skating event is maybe the hockey uniform. And they're in helmets and pads." Miles Chamley-Watson Team USA fencer Miles Chamley-Watson laughed off the idea that the notorious anti-sex beds at the Olympics would dissuade determined athletes. "Listen, if you wanna get it done, you gonna get it done," Chamley-Watson told Us Weekly exclusively during the 2024 Summer Games. "To each his own." Kevin Garnett These days, Team USA's basketball teams don't stay in the Olympic Village, but that wasn't the case at the 2000 Sydney Games, where Kevin Garnett recalls just how quickly athletes snatched up the thousands of condoms made available to them. "We're going in here, everybody hitting the table," Garnett described in a 2025 appearance on the "All the Smoke" podcast. "Some small dude, you can't even see him. He got a trash can. He walking, he walking. Finally, he gets to this big old bowl on the table. You don't even know this is a bowl. The man dumps about 10,000 condoms in the middle of the thing. And then, as he gets out of the way, you can't even see him no more because after about 30 seconds, it's not a condom left in the bowl." Melissa Rivers Jokes We Need to 'Pixelate' Some 2024 Olympics Moments Anastasia Pagonis The rowdy Olympic Village culture extends to the Paralympics as well. Team USA swimmer Anastasia Pagonis told Us exclusively in 2024 that she even pitched a reality show about the Paralympic hookups. "Oh my gosh, yes," she said. "It's the Love Island Village. That is definitely a very, very common thing just about everywhere." Jamie Anderson Snowboarder Jamie Anderson told Cosmopolitan in 2018 that dating apps like Tinder have been a game-changer in modern Olympic villages. "My last Olympics [2014] was when I first learned about Tinder. And it was the best place to go because everybody on it was just a bunch of hot babe Olympians." All 126 Medals Team USA Won at the 2024 Paris Olympics She added in an interview with Us, "Tinder in the Olympic Village is next level. It's all athletes! In the mountain village it's all athletes. It's hilarious. There are some cuties on there." Brandi Chastain Brad Smith/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF Soccer player Brandi Chastain found that in 1996, the Olympic dining hall in Atlanta provided a culture shock. "When I walked in for the first time in Atlanta, there were loud cheers," she told ESPN. "So we look over and see two French handballers dressed only in socks, shoes, jockstraps, neckties and hats on top of a dining table, feeding one another lunch. We're like, 'Ho