2024-03-01 13:02:36
Some 14,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes will be welcomed to the village this summer. And some already have a clear idea of what awaits them.
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“The best of France has been expressed. It’s a collective source of pride, and the result is exceptional!“: Tony Estanguet, the president of the Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (COJOP), did not hide his enthusiasm during the inauguration of the Olympic village, in Seine-Saint-Denis. With Emmanuel Macron and the minister of Sports Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, he praised the work “architects, companies, companions to meet the ambition of reducing carbon emissions by 50%” on the site and delivery to the village on time, despite the difficulties due to Covid and the war in Ukraine, which notably impacted steel supplies.
Next step: fitting out the athletes’ rooms. And they admit it: this Olympic village is a dream, a fantasy, that everyone is impatient to discover. When you are 17 years old, and you are regarding to experience your first Olympic Games, this city within the city – some 82 buildings, 3,000 apartments and 7,200 rooms on a site which extends over 52 hectares between Saint-Denis , the island of Saint-Denis and Saint-Ouen, north of Paris – is a magical place, describes the young French table tennis player, Félix Lebrun.
“It’s something that makes us dream. Obviously, it’s where we go to see the greatest athletes, the people we can watch on TV!”
Felix Lebrunat franceinfo
Thousands of condoms distributed
Lunch facing Novak Djokovic in the “largest restaurant in the world”, running on a mat next to Teddy Riner… A dream, yes, but one that pole vaulter Margot Chevrier is wary of. “It’s a bit of a trap of games, ultimately, especially when it’s the first ones. But we were warned. We were told to be careful, we must not waste too much energy in the village, there are many things to do, we can quickly get lost. And you have to try not to get lost in it.” she confides.
Finally, and it is well known, the village is also the place for other types of sporting performances: friendly and even sexual relations between athletes. American pole vaulter Sam Kendricks, who has only experienced the strange “Covid” atmosphere of Tokyo with compulsory social distancing, is waiting for closer contact. “I hope it will be hot, that we will sweat, that everyone will have a good time because that wasn’t the case in Tokyo. And I don’t want to return to a village if it’s not to enjoy the pleasures it provides!“, he says without blinking. Next summer, 200,000 condoms will be distributed in the village. That’s half as many as at Rio 2016, which remains a record edition in this area.
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