this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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‘It is rule 62 of the Olympic Charter that we have to have a condoms story,’ says IOC spokesman Mark Adams

top 41 comments
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[–] Bot@sub.community 1 points 36 minutes ago

You can only do missionary in Italia! Condom is ungodly.

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

If I was an athlete and there were condoms with Olympic logo branding getting handed out, I would SO hoard them for souvenirs. Can you imagine?

They're in Italy. There are farmacie all over the place. They can get store-brand ones.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 31 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I don’t see why condom companies aren’t shipping in truckloads for free. You can’t beat that kind of publicity. L

[–] Heikki2@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

This reads like the startn of Dr Seuss erotica

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 3 points 36 minutes ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago)

I found myself in Italy
They said we could have condoms free
All partnered up by two or three
Everyone partook with glee
But now none are left for me

So hearken friends
My luck portends
This story ends
For me unfortunately

I skied directly into a tree
Then rolled the dice in the dormitory
It now burns badly when I pee
I hope my mom is proud of me
I only brought home an STD

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 4 points 2 hours ago

You can’t beat

🤔

[–] Sabin10@lemmy.world 34 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That's less than 4 per athlete, not sure why they thought that would be enough.

[–] flightyhobler@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Per athlete or pair of athletes? I'm too lazy to Google

[–] Susaga@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Per athlete. It's about 6 and a half per male athlete.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 51 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You want more olympians, this is how you get more olympians.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (3 children)

this is how you get more olympians.

If enough people are in the market, have egg or sperm donor companies call people who medal.

considers

Looking down the road, because my expectation is that sooner or later, we're going to be doing human genetic engineering, a company getting Olympian genetic material like that might be


as long as they can operate in a legal jurisdiction that doesn't prohibit human genetic engineering


better off just calling up medalists and licensing their DNA. I don't think that you can copyright DNA under current US case law, though it might be patentable.

investigates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_genetic_sequences

As of 2016, genetic sequences were not recognized as copyrightable subject matter by any jurisdiction.[3] The United States Copyright Office's position is that "DNA sequences and other genetic, biological, or chemical substances or compounds, regardless of whether they are man-made or produced by nature," are ideas, systems, or discoveries rather than copyrightable works of authorship.[15]: 23 

You might not need to copyright or patent it, though, if you can just keep the changes you make secret. I mean, you get sperm/egg from Random Person, you do your proprietary modifications, you generate an embryo, you implant. I'm not sure how hard it would be for some other company to reverse-engineer the changes by looking at people's DNA relative to background noise in the DNA.

searches

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33095042/

A large majority of countries (96 out of 106) surveyed have policy documents-legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes, and international treaties-relevant to the use of genome editing to modify early-stage human embryos, gametes, or their precursor cells. Most of these 96 countries do not have policies that specifically address the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos in laboratory research (germline genome editing); of those that do, 23 prohibit this research and 11 explicitly permit it. Seventy-five of the 96 countries prohibit the use of genetically modified in vitro embryos to initiate a pregnancy (heritable genome editing). Five of these 75 countries provide exceptions to their prohibitions. No country explicitly permits heritable human genome editing.

The thing is that in practice, if you want in vitro implantation, you can probably just travel abroad to a jurisdiction that doesn't prohibit it, unless countries assert extraterritorial jurisdiction that attaches to their citizens. If someone wants an Olympianized kid, I imagine that traveling abroad isn't that much additional barrier. Extraterrorial jurisdiction exists, but it is very rare; prohibitions on child sex tourism are one notable example that a number of countries do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction

EDIT: Replaced the text and citation for the legal overview, as it looks like the earlier link was to a spam site that copied it.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago

Sir, we did it, we got Olympian sperm!

Excellent, what sport?

Shot put 

Fuck. 

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 12 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Take it from me, you don't want to go down the "eugenics" road...

[–] stephan262@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

I have a feeling it's gonna be a long road, getting from here to there with eugenics. I'd much rather use technology to overcome our limitations.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Forget in vitro, just CRISPR that shit into my DNA!

[–] Steve@communick.news 91 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

While I don't doubt many athletes are being quite active.
I'd also believe it's a joke at this point for them to all take as many as they can no matter if they intend to use them or not.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 hours ago

There was an article a few years ago where a few athletes were interviewed anonymously IIRC. It's a fuckfest. You put a lot of people in peak physical shape together, what are you expecting?

[–] massive_bereavement@fedia.io 26 points 7 hours ago

You roll initiative onto someone and they pull out one of these bad boys, and I call that a 'power move'.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Let them. How is this not huge free publicity!

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 58 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

In France, they gave 300k condoms. That's 30x the amount they gave here. And they used them all in France, how long the fuck did they think those 10k would last?

[–] zikzak025@lemmy.world 26 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

For what it's worth, there are more people at the summer Olympics than the winter ones (~10,500 in Paris and ~2,900 at Milan according to Wikipedia) but still one would think there should at least be 1/4 as much if they're just looking at athlete numbers alone.

[–] coherent_domain 17 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

10k for 20 days of olympic and for 3k athletes that is 10k * 2 / 20 / 3k = 1/3 of a condom per couple per day, that sounds down right reasonable for a bunch of young, perfectly shaped teenagers constantly in celebration mode.

[–] mracton@piefed.social 11 points 4 hours ago

I wouldn’t want to share a condom with two other couples each day. That’s barbaric. /j

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I think Brazil gave out 400.000

[–] Illegalmexicant@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

And I find condoms past the expiration date.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 16 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Best souvenir going. But also a lot of young people in peak physical condition. As someone I know commented "everyone is 10/10 from the neck down."

[–] Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 7 points 5 hours ago

And those people have higher than average testosterone, so they're hornier. Apparently Olympic Village is a small orgy, hence all the condoms.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

10'000 is super low, I remember hearing about one or two hundred thousand in recent years. I guess that was regular and not winter, but still. No wonder they ran out.

[–] X@piefed.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Winter Olympics, probably fewer people than the summer Olympics, where they had 300k.

[–] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

I wonder why they don't carry some from home lol

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world -3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Check who took them. Could be people from poorer countries, where condoms are expensive.

Could be random religious zealots who are envious (or worse) of people actually heaving sex.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 3 points 2 hours ago

10k literally just isn't enough. Summer Olympics where there are 3-4x more athletes tend to have hundreds of thousands in stock.