Local author James Buckley has lifted the lid off the steamier side of the Olympic Games.
RUMOURS of steamy sexual soirees going on inside the Olympic village have been slowly filtering out to the public over recent years, and now local author James Buckley has lifted the lid on the salacious history of sex and the Olympic Games.
His new book Sex and the Olympics: The unauthorised guide delves into the extra-curricular activities going on inside the athletes village, where some impressive feats of Olympic stamina and athleticism have taken place over the years.
‘‘Bear in mind, they’re there for two weeks in the athletes village – 10,000 athletes, half male, half female – and they’re pretty much the only ones allowed in there,’’ Buckley said.
‘‘There’s no press, there’s no fans, and you’ve got these guys, some of who have worked for a lifetime to get where they are. So that means a ridiculous amount of discipline over a long period of time, and they get to a point where they compete, and all of a sudden they’ve gone from a massive build-up, to a period of nothing.
"They’re left in this village with thousands of other like-minded people, who are all hard-bodied athletes full of adrenaline. So it’s just a case of letting off steam, and everyone’s got the same attitude,’’ he said.
The book charts the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) first response to the demands of randy athletes at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 when it issued 8500 condoms to help promote safe sex, which equated to roughly one condom per athlete.
That figure swelled to 90,000 at Sydney, plus an emergency shipment of an extra 20,000 in the final days of the games, and then climaxed at Athens in 2004, where 130,000 condoms were issued. Early predictions for the coming London games estimate 150,000 condoms will be required.
‘‘From all reports, the majority of those are getting used, which is quite incredible,’’ Buckley said. And it’s not all good clean fun, as the chapter on some Olympic-sized sexually transmitted infections (STIs) reports.
Written in collaboration with researchers at niche Canberra publishing house, Collaborative Publications (C-Pubs), Sex and the Olympics: The unauthorised guide will be officially launched at Smiths Bookstore in Civic at 2pm this Saturday. Buckley will be on hand to sign copies of the book, and share a few more anecdotes from the private lives of Olympic athletes.
Sex and the Olympics is also available as an eBook, via iTunes, Barnes&Noble.com, Google eBooks, Sony eBooks and other retailers.