Playing It Safe in Sydney

Underscoring its current advertising campaign, which features the tagline “Celebrate Humanity,” Olympic officials are planning at this September’s Sydney Games to put out 50,000 condoms at the Olympic Village.

For 10,000 athletes.

You do the math. And even 50,000 may not be enough, officials say--perhaps giving new meaning to the Olympic motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” which means, “Faster, Higher, Stronger.”

“Every athlete is entitled to go pick up condoms according to his own needs,” Dr. Patrick Schamasch, the staff director of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission, said Thursday in an interview during IOC meetings.

Schamasch quickly amended his remarks to allow for equal time: “Condoms will also be available to women. If a woman wants a condom, she will certainly be allowed to have it--and not have to be disguised as a man.”

While the subject clearly invites a certain ribaldry, Schamasch and other health care professionals are dead serious about the need for athletes--and others--in Sydney to practice safe sex.

“It’s a major public health issue in this country,” said Patsy Trethowan, medical program manager for the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, known as SOCOG.

So at the Games, she said, it only makes sense to have condoms freely available, and to make them available for free.

Speaking by telephone from Australia, she said: “Kids are a long way from home. It may be the first time they’ve traveled. Language may be a barrier. Just the nature of the Games,” where it can be difficult for athletes to escape the Olympic Village, “makes it harder to go to a chemist on the corner to buy condoms.”

In recent years, it has become something of a tradition at the Games for condoms to be available in the village.

For example, at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, a local manufacturer donated condoms. In addition, the Nagano mascots--the Snowlets--promoted their own brand of Olympic condoms.

At the Atlanta Summer Games in 1996, posters, pamphlets and buttons in 17 languages were used to relay the “safe sex” message, and condoms--in packs celebrating the five Olympic colors--were available in the village.

In Atlanta, 50,000 condoms were available. That’s how Sydney organizers settled on that number as well. As in Atlanta and Nagano, the condoms in Sydney will be donated by a latex company.

But in Atlanta, Trethowan noted with the sort of laugh Australians use when they compare things in the States to things Down Under and expect to see a demonstration of Australian superiority, “They had, I’m not sure, about 5,000 left over.”

Sydney organizers expect about 10,000 athletes to compete at the Games. Add in coaches, officials and visitors, and Trethowan estimated that perhaps 20,000 or so people could be in the village at a given time. “And they will all have access to these condoms,” which will be available in punch bowls outside the Olympic pharmacy.

“You just come get them,” she said. “We’re not going to check your name off.”

Schamasch added that there’s no limit to the number of condoms anyone can grab at a given time. Though, he added with a wink: “If you need 30 for a night, you will be drug-tested.”