PARIS — The four Kenyan athletes had just arrived at the 52-acre, 82-building Paris Olympic Village intersected by the River Seine. One was pushing a wheeled cooler with a giant wireless speaker on top, blasting African pop music.
All four were swaying, grooving, gyrating their way down the street.
Around them residential towers rose with flags of different countries hanging from windows and balconies. Uzbekistan on the ground floor, South Korea above them, Montenegro and the tiny African nation of Lesotho above them. Azerbaijan next to Bosnia and Herzegovina next to China.
Athletes from Sierra Leone and Costa Rica walked past in team gear. Spaniards aimlessly rode past on bikes. The Serbian women’s volleyball team appeared around the corner. At the village plaza next to the river, the Argentine men’s field hockey team lounged in chairs. Down the block, the Austrian delegation was checking in. Georgian jukokas were in the game room.
Over the next 19 days, the Olympics Games will be contested across 329 medal events in 32 sports. Most of the venues are in metropolitan Paris. Soccer is in stadiums across the country. Basketball is in Lille north toward the Belgian border. Sailing is in Marseille south on the Cote d’Azur. Surfing is in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti.
But the essence of the Olympics is here, inside the secure perimeter of the swaying, grooving, gyrating village, a utopian bubble out of the media’s gaze (except for brief open house Tuesday), largely shielded from the commercialization and corruption that have increasingly tarnished the interlocking rings, strictly accessible to only athletes and accredited staff.
The heartbeat of the Games.
The soul of the Games.
The spirit of the Games.
The innocence of the Games.
“You are the peace ambassadors of our time,” International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said during a visit to the village that houses athletes from Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine. “You, the athletes, will show us how our world would be, if we all lived in the same Olympic spirit of peaceful co-existence.”
It’s one of those cheesy, cringy cliches you spew when you’re the IOC president and you have to make a speech and sound important. It’s also true.
Athletes will tell you they remember the competitions and, for those fortunate enough to win them, the medals. But they never forget their two weeks in the village, immersed in the elite collection of athleticism and accomplishment, carrying a tray of food through the massive dining hall and plopping down next to Peruvian rowers or Bulgarian weightlifters.
Paris promises a return to past village life after subpar experiences in 2016 and 2021. Rio de Janeiro was plagued by construction snafus that led to leaking ceilings and exposed wiring. Tokyo, after a one-year delay, was marred by draconian pandemic protocols inhibiting the human interaction that is sort of the whole idea behind an athletes’ village.
“In 2021, we were waiting to take a picture by the Olympic rings and we got to chatting with some Australian rowers,” U.S. swimmer Nic Fink said. “We were going back and forth about more details of your sport and where you’re from. It was a really cool experience because we’re both elite athletes in these Games and there’s still so much that we don’t know about each other.
“The way the last Games were with COVID and everything, it was kind of like ‘stranger danger’ in a sense. The last thing you wanted to do was not compete because you caught COVID. I’m actually looking forward to having more experiences like that here, where you kind of get to know people from different countries and different sports and have those fun interactions.”
Laurent Michaud, the director of the Paris village, has made that a priority, saying: “It is very important that the conviviality here is something big (with) “spaces where the athletes would feel very enthusiastic and comfortable.”
That means a $2 billion project, the most expensive line item on the Paris budget, that was largely funded by private investors to convert the former power plant into a vibrant residential neighborhood afterward. That means an on-site bakery near the entrance so athletes can smell the baguettes and croissants as they come out of the oven. That means a 4,600-square-foot dining hall with six themed food stations with recipes from celebrity chefs. That means five giant purifying towers that scrub exhaust fumes from the nearby highway.
That also means condoms are back.
They have been a fixture of past Olympics, and Michaud said 200,000 will be distributed to the 14,250 residents of the Paris village. Some reports say the number is closer to 300,000. Another said it’s closer to 600,000. (You can do the math.)
The packages have pithy messages on them with a picture of the Olympic mascot winking:
No need to be a gold medalist to wear it.
On the field of love, play fair (and) ask for consent.
Don’t share more than victory: Protect yourself against STDs.
The condoms are back, but so, to the chagrin of some athletes, are the beds. They are singles with a (yes) cardboard base, part of the Olympics’ sustainability initiative. They seem to be sturdier than in Tokyo, where athletes posted videos of them collapsing under the weight of a second person.
The mattresses, constructed of air fiber by a Japanese company, actually have separate sections that can be fitted to your specific dimensions. The village has an official fitting area where you input your height and weight plus front and side photos into a computer algorithm that spits out the ideal firmness for your head, torso and legs. Each section can be flipped to customize the desired cushion. There are extensions for taller athletes.
(Americans tend to prefer softer beds than the rest of the world; they brought their own mattress toppers.)
There are also fitness facilities, roof gardens, laundry services, a game room, an apparel shop, a hair salon, a post office, a health clinic, a multi-faith center, a mindfulness center and a nightclub (but no alcohol). Athletes’ welcome bags include a special Olympic-edition mobile phone from IOC sponsor Samsung, among other goodies. There are food stands and vending machines everywhere, all gratis.
Yet for all the amenities and conveniences, it’s the athletes who make the village, not the other way around. It’s the Serbian women’s volleyball team appearing around the corner. It’s the Kenyans with the boom box.
“It’s always exciting when you walk in for the first time and you see all the buildings and the different countries’ flags,” swimming superstar Katie Ledecky said. “It’s really a beautiful sight, to see athletes from all different sports walking around and interacting. Just really neat.”
No need to be a gold medalist to dance.
