Tom Daley tests out the Olympic Village’s ‘no-sex’ cardboard beds

As hundreds of athletes gather in Paris from around the world for more than two weeks of unrivalled sporting prowess there is one question that may be bothering them: why do Olympians have to sleep on anti-sex cardboard beds?

Thanks to athletes’ social media profiles, it is possible to see behind the scenes at the Olympic Village and debunk some of the myths about cardboard beds, food and condoms.

Take Tom Daley, Team GB’s diving star who is embarking on his fifth Olympics and must have witnessed it all before, but even he is excited to show everyone how Paris 2024 organisers have implemented their take on the cardboard bed following on from their introduction at Tokyo 2020.

To the soundtrack of Charli XCX’s ‘Apple’, Daley’s social media post shows us his cardboard bed, engulfed in Paris 2024-branded sheets. The Tokyo 2020 diving gold medallist then demonstrates his springboard technique on the bed, which holds firm despite his jumping. His verdict was “pretty sturdy”.

The Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan was the first to debunk claims at the last Olympics that the cardboard beds were brought in to “avoid intimacy among athletes”. In Paris, the pommel horse specialist performed some rigorous acrobatics on the bed without causing any damage. The anti-sex bed idea is, he shouts: “FAKE NEWS!”

The Australian tennis players Daria Saville and Ellen Perez also took to social media to show eight different ways of testing the durability of the beds. Perez posted a short film of herself doing high knees on the bed whilst being held back by a resistance band, as well as the worm, squat jumps, step ups, racquet smashing, volley practice, sleeping, and finally the cannonball, after which she to the camera to confirm that she is in fact “alive”.

Saville has also posted a vlog on Instagram about her Olympic Village experience. The Team Australia building has its own coffee shop and and for lunch the Hawaiian poke bowl is an option. Her apartment has one bathroom shared by four athletesand the different ranges of bed bases with “soft” and “moderate” options are shown.

The Team USA fencer Miles Chamley-Watson appeared on TikTok to show where the vast stores of condoms are located in the Village. The 2016 Olympic bronze medallist shows wrappers baring slogans from “say yes to consent, no to STDs” and “don’t share more than a victory” to “no need to be a gold medallist to wear it”.