by THANE BURNETT
LONDON - And now — turn down the lights and switch on the projector please — we bring you up to date on the history of Olympic debauchery. Or at least how prostitutes are now more likely to lose their shirts during the Games.
Every time the world gathers for greatness, the headlines reach down low.
That prostitutes are expected to flood into a host city, “Ho’ing For Gold”.
Here in London, escort agencies, using Olympic sounding names, started to pop up online as the more official welcome mat was rolled out to the world.
“During the Olympics,” notes one of those sites: “We understand that it is very important to offer an escort service that is very … discreet.” Calls to several of the services drew a very discreet response. They all hung up.
Georgina Perry, who works at Open Doors, a support project dealing directly with East London prostitutes around several of the main venues, says the Olympics are never good for the sex trade.
“All the studies show there’s no increase in sex workers,” she says of past Olympics, including the Winter Games in Vancouver.
One Canadian study found concerns over an increase in sex trade workers during our Winter Olympics never took place, and local prostitutes were instead moved away from their usual spots.
The same has happened in London, with police in Newham, the borough where the Olympic stadium is located, locking the doors on an estimated 80 brothels last March.
Police said it was because of public demand. But London Mayor Boris Johnson has made no bones about where he stands, posting on his site: “We are determined to crack down on prostitution and human trafficking in the run up to the London 2012 Games.”
In fact, the arrests of London prostitutes began in 2010 with much tighter laws around brothels.
And the Olympics have not turned around their fortunes.
While different from borough to borough — those around Hackney have been largely left alone by police while in Stratford they have reportedly been pushed out — Perry explained: “The women have said it’s very quiet.”
The Olympics coincide with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and that has added to the drop in customers, she adds.
Gone, it seems, are the good old days for your average harlot when the best athletes gathered.
“Prostitution was a huge deal in the ancient Games,” says historian Tony Perrottet, author of The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games.
The original festival attracted 40,000 sports fans — all male — to the remote religious sanctuary.
“And off the field the event developed a riotous carnival atmosphere,” Perrottet explains to me.
“Brothel owners … brought in teams of beautiful girls from around Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor.” Any good prostitute would try to get to the Olympics, and earn in five days what would normally take her a year to make.
Their male counterparts made a killing as well.
In fact, while we think of those original competitions as pure sport, Perrottet reminds that they were rife with cash rewards and cheating, starting in 336 BC, when Eupolus of Thessaly bribed three boxers to throw their fights against him.
At least one modern Olympian has learned from history.
New Zealand taekwondo fighter Logan Campbell opened a legal brothel in Auckland years ago to finance his sports dream.
In 2010, under pressure from the New Zealand Olympic Committee, he sold the 14-room cathouse.
But he made enough money to get him here to compete.
So if not London prostitutes, at least someone managed to return to the glory days of an Olympics without pants.
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Sex, Games and Olympic Village life
By Ben Wyatt, CNN
Olympic Park, London (CNN) -- The face of the Olympics is well known the world over: athletes winning, losing, straining every sinew of their bodies in the pursuit of podium glory. But behind the scenes there is another story of the athletes' lives and the use of their bodies, one that centers on their time staying at the Olympic Village. "Anyone who wants to be naive and say they don't know what's going on in the Village are lying to themselves," one former gold medalist and veteran of two Olympics told CNN of his previous experiences at the Games. "They know, the officials know, even the media. It's not a secret, everyone knows!
"(Sex) is all part of the Olympic spirit. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) wouldn't say that, but it is, you can't shy away from it. Why do you think they give away so many condoms?"
The Athletes' Village at the Olympic Games is a unique environment: Nearly 3,000 tightly-packed apartments, containing over 10,000 of the world's finest athletes who have traveled from more than 200 countries around the world to stay for a two-week sporting jamboree.
A potent mix of fit, body beautiful, young people -- many of whom have abstained from sexual intercourse as part of a disciplined training regime -- being in the same place, at the same time; cocooned from the outside world by tight security and often reveling in the glory of success and attention of devoted crowds and the world's press.
It is maybe only human nature that people, when placed together, procreate to some extent, but that libidinous cocktail means London 2012 officials were right if the experiences of Sydney and Atlanta were anything to make 150,000 condoms -- a record for the modern Games -- available to the Village's frisky inhabitants, according to CNN's source
"The athletes don't know what to expect the first time they go to the Olympics, but it just happens," added the former gold medalist, who is now approaching his late 30s, looking back at his Olympic experiences. "As soon as you finish competing there's no sleeping until the next day!
"Many of the volunteers (in the Village) would say 'Oh, what is your room like?' and I knew they were not really wanting to see the room. It's just fun, they are excited to be with the athletes.
"You talk, you go to your room. Let me say this ... there were lots of volunteers and they were happy to help you with whatever your needs were.
"My roommate and I would put something on the door so we would know if the other was 'busy'. I feel bad to say it but my coach actually guarded the door the night before me and my roommate were racing (because of our reputations)! But it didn't affect me like that. When I raced after sex I felt light on my feet.
"We were young and most of the people I hung out with were single. Hope Solo told it basically like it is," said the runner, referring to the U.S. female soccer team goalkeeper.
Solo is one of the few current athletes to have been candid about her experience of the Village environment.
"There's a lot of sex going on," said the 30-year-old keeper In an interview with ESPN Magazine, prior to the London Games.
"With a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you want to build memories, whether it's sexual, partying or on the field. I've seen people having sex right out in the open. On the grass, between buildings, people are getting down and dirty."
The anonymous runner who spoke to CNN, said that he found himself in the exact situation Solo had described, despite the surveillance of airborne security at the Village employed after a bomb exploded at the Atlanta Games in 1996.
"It was around one in the morning and security wouldn't let us out of the Village, so me and my roommate went to the cafeteria for something to eat. The girls in there said 'Oh, we finish in an hour, what are you guys doing?' So we said 'We're heading back to our room'. They asked if they could walk with us, and all I will say is we didn't make it back to the room - and this with the helicopters flying over with their searchlights! It was OK, we were under trees."
Shenanigans that would conceivably come as no surprise to swimmer Ryan Lochte and winner of five medals in the London pool.
"Seventy to 75 percent of Olympians hook up behind the scenes," the 27-year-old swimmer told ESPN in July. "Hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do."
Solo believes the friendly nature of the Games makes it easy to meet people.
"Unlike at a bar, it's not awkward to strike up a conversation because you have something in common," Solo told ESPN. "It starts with, 'What sport do you play?' All of a sudden, you're fist-bumping."
"Sydney was the best, they were so welcoming, friendly and passionate," said CNN's anonymous athlete, referring to the 2000 Games.
"In Sydney it was like going back to your school reunion and seeing people you haven't seen for a few years. Athletes from the Bahamas, Jamaica, friends that you keep with on the circuit all excited about being there. The Olympic spirit somehow touches everyone.
"In the Village you have an official masseuse and I was having problems with my leg after my race. So I went to the medical center which ultimately led to me having a rub down and I remember the very pretty lady who was going to treat me. She said: 'Please take off your clothes' and then she said 'Oh my God, look at your body, I've never seen a body like this!' So she helped with the rub down and afterwards I knew something was going to happen, and it did."
However, it is not just the sexually-charged nature of the Athletes' Village that makes it such unique accommodation.
According to former 100m men's champion Linford Christie, the Village offers a unique opportunity to spend time, and often to make friends, with other athletes and even rivals.
"I loved staying in the Village, when I was Team GB captain I encouraged people to stay there because how on earth will the young athletes develop if all the experienced stars stay away? It's a way to take your mind of the pressure of your event," said Christie, who is working with CNN during the Olympics.
"In 1992 there was the basketball 'Dream Team' and you see Michael Jordan walking around in the cafeteria - it was like 'woooh!' You look up to him, firstly, because he was seven foot but also because he was a big star. I collected autographs in there, for other people.
"And in track and field the people that you compete against are often your good friends. I met Frankie Fredericks that way. I've got a good friend who was a German handball player and have friends from swimming as well as track and field. I met people through sport that I would never have met otherwise."
The Village also creates an environment in which national teams can bond.
"I think it's very positive, because it's a shared experience and it's a leveler," said Christie.
"Sometimes the food was bad, but if I performed as team captain and I'd eaten the same food then that was a message for the team: it was no excuse. It's fun, you can hang out with superstars and you get a chance to talk to people instead of being cocooned in a hotel on your own somewhere."
Kriss Akabusi, a veteran of the Los Angeles and Barcelona Games, also felt staying at the Village was a vital part of the Olympic experience.
"You know you've arrived when you get to the Village. The best of the best are there and everything is available for your needs," she said.
"I'm quite an insular person, self centered even, and the Athletes' Village was good for my preparation because everything there is about 'you'. You can decide whether or not you want to speak to the press or not. If you have a niggle then there's a doctor, physio, all there ready to go," the 400m runner and hurdler told CNN.
"LA had the best facilities. We could email and get information straight away as it was the beginning of internet facilities. They had 24/7 movies, great food and it was my first time in America, Hollywood! It was phenomenal Games.
"For 17 days we were the center of the universe. And if people were getting jiggy that's fine but that wasn't my experience or a lot of other athletes."
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White girl wants Usain's Bolt
Olympic volunteer likes what she sees as Usain Bolt warms up.
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Epke Zonderland on Men's Horizontal Bar
The Flying Dutchman, Epke Zonderland on the Men's Horizontal Bar, who revived my childhood belief in Peter Pan, as he proved a man could fly. Looking every inch a movie star, with a winning smile and an easy manner, he scored an astonishing 16.533 points to secure the first ever Gold for the Netherlands in this event. ____________________________________________________
Watch Gymnast Aly Raisman’s Parents Hilariously React To Her Performance
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Women's Beach Volleyball London Olympic games 2012
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Olympics 2012 - Diving FAIL !
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Funny dance by runner Ezeki Kemboi
Kenya Kenyan . Olympics 2012. London. Gold.
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Canada’s Melissa Tancredi got away with stomping on Carli Lloyd’s head during semifinal
Even before the U.S. scored its 123rd-minute extra-time winner to beat Canada 4-3 and advance to the Olympic women’s soccer final, Canada was accusing the match’s referee of collusion. A rare time-wasting call on Canada goalkeeper Erin McLeod and a handball call on the ensuing indirect free kick led to an 80th-minute penalty for the U.S.’s Abby Wambach, which put the score at 3-3 and sent the match to extra time. ”The ref decided the result before the game started,” said Canada’s hat-trick scoring Christine Sinclair her side was eliminated. “If the United States were honest they’d know they got lucky,” added Canada coach John Herdman. But newly re-examined images from the match reveal that Canada got a bit lucky in places itself.
The fuzzy image above (and the clearer one below) shows Canada’s Melissa Tancredi, who finished the match with just one yellow card despite being called for at least seven fouls, stomping on the head of fallen U.S. midfielder Carli Lloyd in the box. You can see a gif of the incident here for context. Tancredi appears to deliberately step back in order to plant a boot on Lloyd’s head, but what could have very well been a straight red card wasn’t called at all. The referee did stop play soon after to check on Lloy’d condition, though.
Yet Tancredi still felt it reasonable to accuse referee Christina Pederson of fixing the match to her face during the game. From the Toronto Sun:
When asked what she said to Pederson after the call [that led to the penalty], she said: “I hope you can sleep tonight and put on your American jersey because that’s who you played for today. I was honest.”
If you add up all the calls and non-calls for each side, they still might not even out in the end. But then again, they rarely do. The point in showing this is simply to illustrate that the Canadian team’s conspiracy theories are a bit silly.
As for Tancredi, if this is brought to the attention of FIFA, she could still be punished for it. Colombia’s Lady Andrade was later given a two-match ban for punching Wambach in the face during a group-stage match after the referee missed it.
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German weightlifter drops 432-pound barbell on his head, walks away
Defending weightlifting gold medalist Matthias Steiner walked away from a terrifying incident Tuesday when he dropped a barbell weighing 432 pounds on his neck during the Olympic 105+ kg competition. The German was attempting to snatch 196 kg when his knees and arms buckled, causing the massive weight to fall on top of his head. Steiner collapsed under the barbell and instantaneously flopped while its mass bent his neck and head. He was immediately tended to by medical officials and somehow got to his feet, saluted the crowd and walked off under his own power.
He didn’t return to the competition. The Associated Press reports Steiner went to the hospital for precautionary X-rays.
Steiner knew it was going wrong early in the lift. He tried to snatch anyway.
Organizers brought out a shade to block the crowd from seeing physicians and trainers attend to Steiner.
Thanks for the modesty, IOC. Once you’ve seen a 320-pound man drop 1.5 times his body weight on top of his head and flop around like a rag doll, it’s good to cover him up. Wouldn’t want to invade his privacy. (Meanwhile, the people sitting on the sides of the arena get a birds-eye view.)
But you can’t keep a super-heavyweight weightlifter down. Steiner popped to his feet soon after and walked off to the cheers of the crowd.
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The New Nude Olympics, by Zhenming ZhaiWe all know that for a period of time in Ancient Greece, athletes in Olympic Games often ran naked. Nudity was later banned for some religious reasons. On this fact alone, we can pose a serious question: “Is the current ban on nudity in Olympic Games grounded on any legitimate reason?”
Humans, like any other creatures, were born naked, that is, nudity is our natural state. In today’s electronic language, nudity is our default parameter. We might have some reasons strong enough to override our default parameter in question in daily life, but whether the same reasons hold in a setting of Olympic Games is a totally different matter that has hardly been reflected upon.
Before a deeper probe into the issue, I am not sure whether the ban on nudity in public in everyday life is totally justified. But I am fairly confident that adopting rules such as nudity ban in Olympic Games that originated from a certain kind of religious ideology is very much in conflict with our established assumptions of ideological neutrality. Besides, Olympics is meant to glorify the strength and beauty of human physique as given, and thus any sense of shame pertaining to nudity is at odds with the motif of Olympics. Advocate of Nudity is very often linked to, or even taken to be the same as, advocate of open sexuality. Whether open sexuality or free sex is evil is, again, debatable, but equating exposure of sexual organs in sports with obscenity is totally nonsensical. Since almost every individual life starts with sexual intercourse, in my humble opinion, any sense of negative feeling towards natural sexuality is pathological, and possibly a result of ideological manipulation.
But in Olympics there is no room for rules based on ill-founded ideology. After so many years of ungrounded ban on nudity, can we expect a legitimate change toward the recovery of nudity in Olympic Games? Can we begin to envision much more exciting and inspiring scenarios when we hear the word “Olympics” and speak of the Games? I have good reasons to believe strongly that nudity should be recovered in Olympic Games.
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Alan White's Olympics Diary: Beautiful Bradley, and the IOC's billion-pound edifice of immorality
Jacques Rogge's committee does nothing but look out for its own interests.
by Alan White
I’m so sorry. I wanted to wax lyrical about the beauty of Bradley. Of course I did. But duty calls. So.
On Tuesday, the women’s badminton took an unexpected turn when the Danes pulled off a shock win over a strong Chinese pair and took the top of Group D. The Chinese were due to meet the winners of Group A. Another Chinese pair was playing South Korea for that position.
Neither of them wanted to meet the first Chinese pair, so, to mounting boos and intervention from the referees, they tried to out-underperform each other, deliberately hitting the shuttlecock into the net and so on. The same thing happened in the next match, between South Korea and Indonesia.
Now, as I said yesterday, this isn’t particularly redolent of the Olympic spirit. The eight players were referred to the Badminton World Federation, found to be in breach of the code, and were thrown out of the Olympics.
It all seems pretty cut and dry. They were bad sports, so they were kicked out. Except it isn’t, at all. This morning Matthew Syed, the former table tennis competitor for Team GB, has admitted his team once deliberately lost a game in much the same manner. Gail Emms, whom you’ll remember as a 2004 silver medallist in badminton for Great Britain, has also backed the players.
Far more disturbingly, Emms has told the Guardian: “Yesterday, after the Danish players beat the Chinese in the morning session, the team managers went to the organisers and said: "We're a bit worried about these evening matches." Nothing was done. Straight away they should have got all the players and coaches together and said: 'If there is any single sign of someone trying not to win you will all be disqualified.'”
Emms and Syed both blame the officials. And you can see their point: you enter the Olympics to win. Regardless of whether you agree with the players’ actions, the officials shouldn’t put them in a position where that aim is at odds with the sport’s code. And make no mistake, as German singles player Mark Zweiber has pointed out, this had been coming for some time.
But this all leads me to a far bigger issue. Those officials. There is not a hope in hell of them being pulled up for failing to spot this potential row. Instead the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Jacques Rogge, talks only of further action - presumably formally expelling the athletes from the Games.
You could be forgiven for thinking the IOC couldn’t give a monkey’s about the athletes without whom there would be no games. You might think it is simply a train of pampered bureaucrats that floats from one city to the next, detached from anything other than the rarefied scenes it sees in Park Lane, let alone the competitors it purports to represent.
You might wonder how far an organisation with revenues of £3.9bn in the last four years would prioritise the needs of the athletes over other concerns when its two main sources of funding are television rights and sponsorship. Perhaps you’d raise an eyebrow at its banning athletes mentioning their sponsors on social networks, unless they’re the same ones that pay the IOC.
Maybe you think that money doesn’t line the pockets of Rogge’s cronies, and finds its way to the athletes. Perhaps the words of track runner Nick Simmonds, talking to the Guardian this week, will strike a chord: “"The [IOC’s] sponsors have done absolutely nothing to help me be the athlete I am today ... For years my sponsors … have helped me train and compete and now they are made to feel unwelcome. This is not right."”
Maybe you’ll wonder, then, where that money does go, given that the IOC pays no tax. Perhaps you’ll think that, given it has a total monopoly over a global event worth billions, there’s an outside chance of corruption. In which case you might not be shocked to hear a member of the IOC’s executive board only resigned this March, citing a “lack of ethics and principles”. Two months later, the IOC began an investigation (and how rigorous it’s sure to be) into claims that officials were selling tickets to the 2012 Olympics on the black market.
And when you hear that, while their country burns, Greek Olympic officials have paid £150,000 to hire the Carlton Club in Central London to house sponsors, politicians and officials, you might start to think that this is a neat correlative; that this whole “Olympic Family” – the IOC and its shady web of federations and governing bodies – is little more than a shambling, immoral edifice that should be torn asunder, that it has never done anything more than look out for itself right back to the day it felt Berlin would be a suitable venue in 1936. How happy are you about those empty seats we continue to see in stadia right now?
Like I said, I wish I’d talked about Bradley. He was good, wasn’t he?
Odds and Ends
UK gold medal winners when young: Bradley Wiggins pays tribute to his PE teacher, and here’s Heather Stanning’s eery school yearbook, for those who missed it.
Stunning pic of Gabby Douglas at the gymnastics. Speaking of which, a fabulous GIF retelling of how the USA beat Russia. I particularly like MyKayla Maroney's vault – mesmerising.
Spare a thought for the Olympians embracing Ramadan.
As many a wag pointed out, yesterday an enthusiastic BJ was stopped by an unfortunate zip incident. Here’s a load of photoshops – they’re good, but this here video edit is a thing of genius.
How’s the Olympics been for disabled spectators? Pretty good, apparently.
Can’t believe I forgot to mention yesterday’s interview with Bert le Clos. Give this man a medal of his own.
My assertion yesterday with reference to the Tom Daley Twitter troll case that it's better to "walk on by" was poorly-worded: I was trying to emphasise my belief that no good can come of a mob retaliation towards an online abuser. There's nothing wrong with intervening, but as anywhere else, it's better done through the appropriate channels: Twitter being the obvious place to start.
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The Most Popular Theory On Why Lolo Jones Didn’t Medal At The OlympicsMortal enemy of The New York Times Lolo Jones came in a disappointing fourth place during the finals of the 100-meter hurdles today in London. Lolo Jones is also a virgin. Shockingly, there are a few people who think one has something to do with the other. Of course, missing out on a medal had nothing to do with her talent, technique, or the possibility that she didn't have her best day against three better hurdlers. Nope, must've been the lack of sex.
http://deadspin.com/5932782/the-most-popular-theory-on-why-lolo-jones-didnt-medal-at-the-olympics
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