Four years ago the winning medal went to Cuba, thanks to a remark from Australian basketball player Michelle Trims: "The Cubans are using up condoms as if they're about to go out of fashion."
This time around the talk of sex is slightly more discreet, but matters are still exciting when it comes to the unofficial "sport" going on in the suffocating summer heat at the Athens Games.
The debate about whether athletes should have sex or refrain on the night before a big competition was yet again broached by the Greek newspaper Ta Nea.
The newspaper found some surprising opinions: German physicians and Russian psychologists are in favor of sexual relations prior to a big sports event, but Israeli experts only approve of sex in the case of women athletes.
"If the athlete is conditioned by social or religious factors, the influence of sex is negative. But it has not been proved scientifically that sex before competing has a negative effect," said Tassos Stalikas, a Greek sports psychologist.
Durex gave 130,000 condoms and 30,000 portions of lubricating creams to Olympic village administrators for use by athletes. That was 40,000 more than the 90,000 distributed in Sydney, but considerably lower than the 250,000 condoms given away at the Salt Lake City 2002 winter games.
"It's hard to hold back and be modest when faced with so many good-looking people here," Canadian rower Marni McBin was quoted as saying by German newspaper Bild, which gave a detailed account of the sex lives of athletes.
"There are no preliminaries," said German hockey player Christian Blunck, who earned a gold medal in Barcelona. "Everyone gets straight to the point. After all, these are athletes in perfect physical shape. And there's no time to spare."
"It's heaven for men," exclaimed Christian Keller, spokesman for German athletes.
The topic of sex seems to make village administrators uncomfortable. "One thousand condoms were distributed, but I think they were taken as souvenirs," an administrator said.
The figure is right, it is 1,000 condoms, but every day. That's the number of condoms athletes take every 24 hours from machines near the village clinic.
Those are in addition to the ones given to athletes as gifts when they arrive.
The Athens Olympic Games Organizing Committee was scandalized by the Greek edition of Playboy which ran a feature about "2004 seconds of ecstasy" and another about "seeking the gold in the sexathlon" next to five condoms displayed as the famous Olympic rings.
The Greek edition of Men's Health also analyzed the subject of sex and sports. According to the magazine, male swimmers have the best staying power and French athletes most frequently have sex.
Perhaps the Cuban gold medal won at Sydney is at risk this summer.
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