It has become a (quadrennial) tradition to provide condoms for athletes and officials participating in the Olympic Games. At the fast approaching Rio Olympics, it is reported that a total of 450, 000 packs of the protective sheaths will be made available to all the Olympians to help them prosecute the sex sport staged behind closed doors.
The figure is three times higher than the condoms distributed at the London 2012.
According to an online portal, insidethegames, 100,000 female condoms will be made available for the first time, while the remaining 350,000 are to be shared among the males.
The portal quoted the International Olympic Committee or IOC as saying that the sheaths would encourage athletes and officials numbering 10,500 to practise safe sex. The condoms are expected to be in circulation from July 24, 2016. Australia, it will be recalled, had earlier announced it would provide extra-protective condoms to stave off possible Zika attack at the Games.
If the number of condoms to be consumed at the Rio Olympics has taken the breath out of you, then you must have forgotten what happened at the South Africa 2010 World Cup Finals.
In terms of participation, the Olympic Games boast of a larger number. Only 32 countries make it to the World Cup Finals. But the Olympic family is made up of 105 active members and about 36 honorary members. According to media reports, over 3m packs of condoms were ready for shipment to the former apartheid enclave. It is not known how many condoms were eventually unleashed on the venues of the tournament, but it prompted me to do a piece which I entitled: “S/Africa 2010: Soccer war or sex war?” which was published on June 23, 2010 in my column in the LEADERSHIP.
Expected to consume the condoms were 800 soccer players, about 500 coaches, tacticians, medics, psychologists, and, perhaps, stargazers. Then, there were FIFA officials and football technocrats from FIFA-affiliated countries. Sports writers and photographers or photo journalists, cameramen and commentators were also present. Also on ground were supporters’ club members from the participating countries. So also were hundreds of well-wishers who were there to cheer their darling teams.
And above all, there were hedonists, tourists, commercial sex workers who were part of the reasons for the millions of condoms.
Now, the question is “What do sports, nay soccer, and sex have in common?” A lot! It is like where you find a carcass, there must be vultures. Some experts have argued that sports and sex are two sides of the same coin.
This is because they both involve exercising. The only difference is that while sports are activities that entail movement(s), “sexercise” is a motion without movement. It is like a journey to nowhere… like being on the treadmill. While sports attract spectators and they are staged in the open for the whole world to see and under the watch of umpires, sex sports are held behind closed doors… no technical crews, referees/assistant referees are not needed and no sports writers.
Pundits? What for?! Television cameramen/radio commentators and no photo journalists. Are not wanted. Medics? Only if there is an emergency! Masseurs? Probably after the bout(s)! Supporters clubs and spectators? Any third party is an intruder, talk more of a crowd! That is what the Olympians in Brazil will take time off to engage in; that is what the non-Olympians at Rio 2016 will engage their sex mates in behind closed doors for about one month that the jamboree is expected to last.
I never knew that sports jamborees and sex sports were like conjoined twins until 1977.
It was the year the 2nd National Sports Festival was staged in Kaduna. As the sports editor of The Nigeria Standard newspaper based in Jos, I relocated the sports desk to Kaduna for the coverage of the fiesta. In the build-up to the festival, I made the front page with a report of officials and their fellow travellers invading the female camps and preying on the innocent girls under the cover of darkness. I was just doing my job. But unknown to me, the incursions into the female camps by the randy men were normal during such congregations. I was too innocent to know that where there is sports jamboree, there must also be sex sports!
The report caught the attention of the Federal Military Government.
Then all hell was let loose. The chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters, Major-Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, promptly summoned the federal commissioner for Sports, Mr. Dandason Isokrari, to the Dodan Barracks in Lagos with a warning that if the siege laid on the female camps were not called off before the commencement of the fiesta, then the nation should kiss the jamboree goodbye. Isokrari immediately sent his hounds after me for attempting to “sabotage” the festival. I turned tail and swept myself out of sight. Security was beefed up at the female camps and the predators were forced to turn tail too… along with the scandal.
Eventually, the festival was staged. Three years after the Kaduna event, the pre-festival scandal was replicated in faraway Moscow. It was reported that some Nigerian officials to the Games kept the female athletes busy behind closed doors. And that affected the country’s fortunes badly in the female events.
Thirty-two years after, precisely in 2009, the fiesta returned to the Mafia City.
It was reported that the state government procured condoms worth N10m which were freely distributed at the jamboree. I could not believe my ears… till date.
In Brazil, adult prostitution is legal. It is a thriving industry in that Latin American destination. Hedonists will have more than they bargain for in the Sin City called Rio de Janeiro and beyond, Zika or no Zika.
