There is less and less left until the opening of the Olympic Games in Paris. The flame of Greece arrived in Marseille a couple of weeks ago and now it must go around the Hexagon, I suppose. Organized as the French are – and the International Olympic Committee that supervises them – the sixteen thousand beds where the athletes will sleep have already arrived in Paris, in the Olympic Village. They are individual, manufactured by Airweave, and made of cardboard. Airweave is the same company that was in charge of the beds for the Tokyo Games in 2020. Those were also made of cardboard. They make them from this material because, they say, it is the most sustainable and eco-friendly. They are 100% recyclable!
But the athletes – both those who were in Tokyo and those who will now be in Paris – see a not-so-hidden intention: to prevent them from fornicating there. They are designed to collapse under the weight and thrusts of two bodies in full amorous fervor. If they collapse under the weight of two bodies, imagine under the weight of three or four. They are, therefore, an indoor variant of the hostile architecture that exists on many streets to prevent the homeless from sleeping comfortably.
In general, athletes are young people, with their hormones boiling. For decades, it has been well known that the Olympic competitions have a whole series of parallel, carnal competitions. Many athletes talk openly about it later. In order not to stray far from home, let’s remember the case of Matthew Syed, table tennis player in Barcelona 1992 and currently a writer and radio host. In The Times of London, newspaper where he works, he explained one day: “I participated for the first time in the Games in Barcelona, in 1992, and I carded more in those two and a half weeks than the rest of my life.” And while we’re at it, in what sane mind does fornication require a bed?