Ahead of the event, officials have reportedly installed cardboard beds inside the Olympic village to discourage athletes from engaging in sexual activity.
The countdown for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has already begun with the sports event kicking off this weekend.
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Olympic officials — who already warned 2021 Games participants to avoid two-person push-ups because of the coronavirus — have set up 18,000 of the cardboard beds in the notoriously sex-crazed athletes’ village, according to Dezeen magazine.
“Those beds can stand up to 200 kilograms,” Takashi Kitajima, the general manager of the Athletes Village, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
“Kitajima further added that a “wild celebration” such as an athlete bagging a gold could perhaps be bad news for the bed. “Of course, wood and cardboard would each break if you jumped on them,” he said.
“Beds to be installed in Tokyo Olympic Village will be made of cardboard, this is aimed at avoiding intimacy among athletes,” American distance runner Paul Chelimo tweeted.
Olympic athletes have never shied away from hanky panky, but officials have warned it could spell particular trouble this year amid the pandemic.
The 100 percent recyclable cardboard beds were designed by the Japanese company Airweave.
But officials are apparently aware it’s going to take a lot more than the makeshift berths to keep players out of the pole position.
They are distributing a cache of condoms to the athletes, as they have at every Olympic Games since 1988. This year, the condom tally is 160,000. Still, that’s a far cry from the 450,000 doled out for the last summer Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2016.
This year, Olympic officials insist the rubber is for athletes to bring home to spread the message of safe sex.
“Our intent and goal is not for athletes to use the condoms at the Olympic Village, but to help with awareness by taking them back to their own countries,” the Tokyo Olympics Organizing Committee said in a statement to Japan Today.
At least two athletes have already tested positive for the coronavirus at the Tokyo Olympic Village, officials said Sunday.
Another resident of the Village, a visitor from abroad involved in the Games’ planning, was reported as having tested positive a day earlier.