As the Olympic Games Near End, Athletes Are Getting Busy

The life of an Olympic athlete isn't easy. You train for years to compete in an event that often lasts less than a minute. For four years you work out for hours a day to put yourself in position to do your best.

Many athletes will avoid junk food, alcohol and anything else that will stand between them and a chance at an Olympics medal. They'll go through workouts that leave them rubbery-legged and completely gassed in their quest for the gold.

And once their events are over, a whole lot of them are letting off lots of steam. They rush to McDonalds for their first taste of junk food in quite a while. They grab some booze, and as Matt Syed, a British Olympian in table tennis in 1992, explains, they look to hook up with anyone, and everyone, before leaving the Games.

Syed explains the rolling orgy that is the Olympics village in a story in the London Times. As he spells out, there's a whole lot of testosterone flowing for both the men and women competitors, and now that four years of training are finally over, a whole lot of athletes are getting laid.

I spoke to an Aussie table tennis player this week to check out the village vibe and he launched into the breathless patter common to any Olympic debutant: "It is unbelievable in there; everyone is totally crazy once they are out of their competitions. God knows what it is going to be like this weekend. It is like a world within a world." A British runner (anonymous again: athletes are not supposed to talk to journalists unaccompanied by a PR type, least of all about sex) said: "The swimmers finished earlier in the week and it was like there was an eruption."

Apparently, men who win gold are in demand, whether they've got the look of a Greek god or a geek, but Syed says it doesn't work the same way for women--a gold medalist might not get as lucky as a last-place finisher who looks like a model:

The chaps who win gold medals - even those as geeky as Michael Phelps - are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes . . . But - and this is the thing - success does not work both ways. Gold-medal winning female athletes are not looked upon by male athletes with any more desire than those who flunked out in the first round. It is sometimes even considered a defect, as if there is something downright unfeminine about all that striving, fist pumping and incontinent sweating.

You can debate the morality of all the hooking up if you want, but what the Olympic organizers have discovered is you just have to accept it. The British Olympic committee tried to ban outdoor sex after the top of the terrace of the Brits' housing in Seoul was carpeted in used condoms. It didn't work, so now they focus on just making sure that everyone has plenty of the free condoms that are handed out throughout the athlete's village.

So while you may be unhappy that there is no more swimming to watch on NBC, a lot of athletes have another reason to be bummed that the Olympics are coming to a close.