Did the 2024 Paris Olympic Games provide anti-sex beds for athletes? No, that's not true: The cardboard beds used at the Paris Games are intended to be environmentally sustainable and recyclable, to cut CO2 emissions. They are not meant to prevent sex. A similar claim circulated also in 2021, at the Tokyo Olympics, and at that time a post on the Olympic Games X account thanked athletes for debunking the myth themselves.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on June 13, 2024. The caption, translated from Thai to English by Lead Stories staff, read:
Paris olympics provided anti-sex bed for athletes.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Aug 2 06:45:11 2024 UTC)
The Paris Olympic Games have been talked about all over social media. The claim circulating on TikTok alleges that the beds provided to athletes are "anti-sex" because they are made from cardboard, supposedly for single-person use, and not sturdy. The eco-friendly beds, though, have been chosen for environmental purposes (archived here) and are not intended to prevent sex.
According to the Paris Olympic Games' objectives, (achieved here) the aim is to have more sustainable Games and protect the environment. The organizers have laid out a cutting-edge plan to halve the Games-related carbon footprint compared to previous events, using innovative solutions for energy, food, venues, transport, and digital services. The idea of cardboard beds comes from a Japanese company called Airweave, (archived here), a supporter of the 2024 Games and the official bed supplier for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games athletes. The concept of the cardboard bed is that it is fully reusable and recyclable. They were also used in the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 (archived here), where similar claims of "anti-sex" accommodation for the athletes circulated (archived here). At the time, the allegations were addressed by the organizers of the Games on X, formerly Twitter, with a funny post on the Olympic Games account (archived here), which thanked the athletes for "debunking the myth."
To prove that this bed is strong enough and suitable for athletes, in 2021, Motokuni Takaoka, the CEO of Airweave,(archived here) jumped on one of the beds and emphasized that it can support several people. Additionally, the head of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, (archived here), tested one of the beds during a visit to the athletes' village in 2023. Moreover, due to the resurfacing of the claim on social media, Rhys McClenaghan, an athlete from Ireland (archived here), also refuted it again, with a video of him posted on X on July 20, 2024, (archived here) jumping on the bed to demonstrate its strength.
Another indication that the Paris Olympic Games are not trying to prevent athletes from having sex is that they are providing 300,000 condoms (archived here) in the Olympic Village for athletes to use.
