Vegan Food and Cardboard Beds: Athletes Ditch Failing ‘Eco-Friendly’ Olympic Village for Hotels
Michel Euler, Pool/AP
Athletes are ditching Paris’s Olympic village for greener pastures after being forced to deal with “vegan-friendly” food, cardboard beds, no air conditioning, cramped rooms, and long commutes to their competitions.
Team USA tennis star Coco Gauff revealed over the weekend that her entire team has gone to a hotel after having to share two bathrooms amongst ten competitors, the Daily Mail reported.
A TikTok posted by Gauff shows her teammates packed into their small living quarters with dismayed looks on their faces before they eventually left the village:
@cocogauff
The $1.6 billion facility built to house the world’s best athletes was reportedly created with an “eco-friendly” mission — meaning stuffy temperatures caused by a complete lack of air conditioning and a shortage of meat products.
Retired Australian swimmer James Magnussen roasted the Paris Olympics organizers for prioritizing vegan diets over the protein-heavy meals needed by high-performing athletes after the reigning champion of the women’s 200-meter and 400-meter freestyle, Ariarne Titmus, failed to accomplish her goal of setting a world record on Saturday.
“The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance,” Magnussen said of his countrymate.
The majority of the food available in the village’s cafeteria is vegan, he reported.
“They had a charter that said 60 percent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones,” he explained.
“The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets… let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.”
Titmus blamed the dire conditions in the village for her performance in the women’s 400-meter final, though she did take home the gold despite her disappointment in her time.
“It probably wasn’t the time I thought I was capable of, but living in the Olympic Village makes it hard to perform,” Titmus said in a interview Sunday with the Daily Mail.
“It’s definitely not made for high performance, so it’s about who can really keep it together in the mind,” she added.
As the Olympians remaining in the village deal with hot temperatures, they also have to sleep on uncomfortable beds.
U.S. gymnast Frederick Richard thought to ship his own mattress ahead of time because he refused to sleep on cardboard.
“Everyone’s complaining about beds and stuff,” he said. “I ordered my bed already, shipped it here. I had a comfy bed from the start.”
On top of that, the eco-friendly nature of the village has also forced athletes to take public transportation to the stadiums and arenas — meaning they have already gone through a busy commute by the time they are set to compete for the gold.
Six swimmers from South Korea have ditched the village for a hotel in order to avoid taking long bus rides to the meets, Korea Swimming Federation (KSF) president Chong Chang-hoon said.
“We just want to make sure they will be at least a bit more comfortable,” Chong said, explaining that the athletes on his men’s 4×200-meter freestyle relay team are now staying in accommodations that are just a five-minute walk from Paris’s La Defense Arena.
More athletes are expected to leave the Olympic Village as the competitions continue, as they tire of eating little meat and sharing bathrooms with several other people.
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