Did the Olympics Really Run Out of Condoms?

The Olympic Village is known as a cesspool of horniness and sexual tension, where young athletes in the best shape of their life can blow off a little steam in between high-stress competitions. Sadly, it seems like whoever was organizing the condoms for the Winter Olympics didn’t get that memo. According to Italian newspaper La Stampa, this year’s Village ran out of 10,000 free condoms in a record-breaking three days. With just under 3,000 athletes competing in Cortina, that translates to about three condoms per person during a three-day stretch. You have to give it to them.

“The supplies ran out in just three days,” an anonymous athlete told La Stampa. “They promised us more will arrive, but who knows when.”

The big question is not what kind of steamy antics those skaters are getting up to in the Olympic Village — we’ve all seen Heated Rivalry — but how organizers screwed this up so monumentally. Providing free condoms to Olympians is a long-standing practice and something you’d think the Games would have down to an exact science at this point. As Attilio Fontana, the governor of the Lombardy region, pointed out in a Facebook post reported by The Guardian, it’s been happening since the 1988 Seoul Games, when organizers distributed free condoms to “raise awareness among athletes and young people about sexually transmitted disease prevention — a topic that shouldn’t cause embarrassment.”

The 2026 Winter Games do have a smaller pool of athletes than, say, the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. There, the 10,500 athletes received 300,000 condoms, which amounts to two condoms per athlete per day, per La Stampa. That’s far more generous than allotting each person three condoms for the entirety of the Winter Olympics, which span 17 days. Here’s hoping 100,000 condoms get airlifted onto the Italian mountainside ASAP. Until then, stay strong, soldiers.