This is not the first time the Olympics have been accused of puritanical attitudes.

Image courtesy of X user @wheelswordsmith

In mid-June 2024, a viral rumor claimed that athletes’ beds in the 2024 Paris Olympic Village were designed to be “anti-sex.” The rumors circulated alongside photographs showing narrow beds, designed to fit one person, with “Paris 2024” blankets on top.

The New York Post reported the beds were made of cardboard and designed to discourage any “lovemaking”:

There’ll be no lovemaking in the City of Love.

“Anti-sex” beds have arrived in Paris ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, with their materials and small size allegedly aimed at deterring athletes from getting kinky during the competition.

The beds’ twin size means there’s no room for the competitors to sidle up together.

The beds are manufactured by Airweave, which also made the products for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

However, such claims were not entirely true. While the beds are indeed small and made of recycled cardboard, the organizers’ stated goal was to create environmentally friendly furniture and not to discourage sex among athletes. As such, we rate this claim as “False.”

The “anti-sex” rumors repeated an old claim from the 2020 Olympics in Japan, which the Paris Olympics organizers addressed in their response to AFP: “We know the media has had a lot of fun with this story since Tokyo 2020, but for Paris 2024 the choice of these beds for the Olympic and Paralympic Village is primarily linked to a wider ambition to ensure minimal environmental impact and a second life for all equipment.”

The spokesperson added, “[The] quality of the furniture has been rigorously tested to ensure it is robust, comfortable and appropriate for all the athletes who will use it, and who span a very broad range of body types – from gymnasts to judokas.”

Manufactured by Japanese company Airweave, and already used in the 2020 games, the bed bases were made from recycled cardboard, AFP reported. During a 2023 demonstration, Airweave founder Motokuni Takaoka jumped on one of them and said they “can support several people on top.”

According to Reuters, the Paris Olympics organizers are distributing roughly 210,000 male condoms (10,000 of which are latex-free), 20,000 female condoms and 10,000 dental dams to the athletes.

Ahead of the 2024 games, rugby player Ilona Maher posted a TikTok video of the New York Post story, joking about it: “Y’all thinking … Olympic athletes, the top 1% in the world, are going to be deterred by some cardboard? … They’ll find a way.”

As we reported previously, the Olympic Village has a reputation for being a hotbed of sexual activities. One athlete in the 2020 Olympics even posted a video of himself jumping on the bed, debunking the notion that they would easily collapse.