“We were living in filth,” Ariarne Titmus on Olympic Village experience
Swimming champion Ariarne Titmus revealed that conditions at the Paris 2024 Olympic Village were not as glamorous as people think and she was “living in filth”. The 400m gold medallist went on Australia’s TV programme The Project to talk about her recent experience at the Games.
“Our bed sheets got changed after the first night we were there and then they didn’t get changed for the rest of the time we were there, so we were living in filth,” she said.
Olympic champion makes shocking revelation about shocking conditions in Paris village: ‘We lived in filth’: Ariarne Titmus has shared her experience in the Olympic village The Australian swimming champion was not… https://t.co/dWfvVTp6Ms
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Titmus also spoke about the shortage of toilet supplies during her stay.
“We had to lie about being roommates so we could get toilet rolls. You’d run out of toilet paper and they’d give you one [roll] for four days for the entire apartment,” the Australian swimmer recounted.
The swim star is not the first to complain about the Olympic Village’s living conditions. Athletes, including fellow gold medal-winning swimmer Thomas Ceccon, have criticised the Paris Olympics organisation for the lack of comfort, heat and even the food.
“There is no air conditioning in the village, it’s hot, the food is bad,” Ceccon complained.
In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, the Paris Olympic Village was built with a geothermal cooling system that uses cool water pumped from deep beneath the ground —eliminating the need to install ACs. The organisers also provided athletes with fans to combat the Parisian heat.
“There is no air conditioning, just this fan and it is not enough … [The fan] is not powerful enough and when it is pointing at you it is good but after it is turning you don’t feel it. We are sleeping with the door open in the night. The rooms are small and we are two persons,” Romanian table tennis player Bernadette Szocs told the Guardian.
Athletes complain the Olympic Village is ‘too hot, too vegan and rife with theft’ – with air conditioners ‘in high demand’ amid extreme heat in Paris https://t.co/n1hOZ1TMZh
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Several National Olympic Committees had the foresight to bring their own AC units to Paris, in a blow to organisers’ efforts to keep carbon emissions low, including Australia’s who explained that it was to ensure their athletes’ comfort during resting periods. Australian Olympic Committee CEO Matt Carroll added that the delegation was going to a “high-performance Games” and not “a picnic”.
“It probably wasn’t the time I thought I was capable of, but living in the Olympic Village makes it hard to perform. It’s definitely not made for high performance, so it’s about who can really keep it together in the mind,” Titmus later said.