There is a condom conundrum going on at the Olympic Village. It's not much of a secret that a lot of sex goes down among the Olympic athletes who stay in the Olympic Village during the course of the Games. Officials even provide the athletes with tens of thousands of condoms.
However London Olympic organizers are outraged after a bucket full of Australian condoms entered the village without official consent.
Officials learned about the mystery condoms after Australian BMX cyclist Caroline Buchanan tweeted a photo of a bucket of condoms with a flyer that read "Kangaroos condoms, for the gland downunder" and had a picture of a boxing kangaroo.
Buchanan simply found the condoms to be humorous as she wrote "Haha, the rumors are true. Olympic village," when she posted the photo on Twitter on Wednesday.
However, Olympic officials are not laughing. Condom brand, Durex paid for exclusive rights to provide the 10,800 athletes at the Games with 150,000 free condoms. However the bucket of condoms contained brands from Ansell Ltd, an Australian company, and Pasante, a private British firm.
"We will look into this and ask that they are not handed out to other athletes because Durex are our supplier," a Locog spokeswoman told The Guardian.
Organizers are concerned about non-sponsored brands trying to get free promotion from the Games, but the companies claim that they had nothing to do with the bucket of condoms. They think it may have been placed in the village as a joke. The athletes are allowed to bring their own personal stash.
"We have had no official participation or association with the Olympics at all," a spokeswoman for Ansell told The Guardian. She claims Ansell didn't know anything about the issue and she believes it was just a prank.
Lawrence Boon, the managing director of Pasante also believes that the condoms were placed in the Village as a prank by the Australian team. He also claims that his company played no part in it.
"We have no association with the Olympics but we did launch a gold condom this year for champions," said Boon. "With such high teenage pregnancy and STD rates, we try to make people carry condoms by making them fun and interesting."
The number of condoms provided in the Olympic Village grows with every Games. The trend began in Barcelona when the Olympics were held there in 1992. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was behind the move as they wanted to promote AIDS awareness and prevention.
The number of condoms at the 2012 Olympic Games in London is more than the 100,000 that were distributed in Beijing in 2008. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, organizers had to order 20,000 more condoms after the 70,000 that were provided ran out.
