Is Vancouver ready for 2010 sex-fest?

Last week, former table tennis Olympian Matthew Syed wrote a piece for The Times on another ceremony that marks the end of the Olympic Games for many athletes: the Olympic Village sex-fest.

Syed, a competitor at the Games in Barcelona and Sydney and a reporter for Beijing, described the Olympic Village as a “furnace of sexual energy.” Blame it on the heightened levels of hormones or the thousands of toned bodies wearing little more than spandex, but after athletes are eliminated from their events they take on an anything-goes attitude, as well as numerous sex partners. Gold medals in particular, Syed claims, are an extremely effective aphrodisiac for the athletes.

Admittedly, the splendour and spectacle of the Beijing Games will be a difficult act for Vancouver to follow. Vancouver’s Organizing Committee has stated again and again that they will prepare the city for the 2010 Olympic onslaught and show the world that Vancouverites know how to celebrate and have fun. John Furlong, the CEO of the committee, said in a report by the Seattle Times that the Games “will feel more intimate, friendly, and open” than Beijing’s. The Winter Olympians are crossing their fingers.