Olympic athletes are roasting the Olympic Village accommodations on TikTok: ‘The bed sucks’

With day three of the Olympic games concluded, some athletes, including 20-year-old tennis superstar Coco Gauff, have pointed out a few gripes they have with the living situation.

Gauff, who is representing the US, posted a TikTok video on Saturday pointing out how “10 girls” are sharing “two bathrooms” at the complex.

She briefly shows how hectic the space can be as she and other athletes prepare for the day’s events.

Representatives for the athletes mentioned in this article did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

‘The bed sucks’

The Olympic Village was first established in 1924 to bring together thousands of world-class athletes under one roof.

Since then, the facilities have garnered their own lore outside the iconic games themselves, with stories of endless partying and sexcapades.

The villages, which vary each year, have also been subject to some criticism. Athletes complained about the lack of air conditioning at the London Olympics Village in 2012, and perhaps the worst case in recent memory was at the Rio Olympics in 2016, when the village was panned as “uninhabitable” due to poor conditions of the facilities.

While the issues raised with the Paris Olympic Village aren’t as drastic, young Olympians online are pointing out aspects of the living situation that are causing some inconvenience.

Celia Dupre, a Swiss rower, shared a TikTok on July 23, saying that athletes from most nations have opted for hotels instead of the Olympic Village because the complex can be far from the event venues, despite the organizers’ promises that their accommodations would be within 25 minutes of the competition venues.

But the rower added that she wasn’t “necessarily mad” about the change in accommodations partly because the village’s cardboard beds, which have received a lot of attention online, were uncomfortable during her one-night stay.

“We stayed one night in the village, and I didn’t sleep,” she said in the video. “The cardboard box bed was so uncomfortable — hard as a rock. And then the Olympic duvet was really itchy, and it was really hot.”

US gymnast Simone Biles commented in another TikTok video that “the bed sucks” and that she is getting a mattress topper to fix it.

The cardboard beds were previously used at the Tokyo Olympic Village in 2020. Several athletes have complained about the bed before, but US fencer Katherine Holmes previously told Business Insider that they aren’t as uncomfortable as some made them out to be.

90-degree heat with no air conditioning

Dupre also said the complex does not have air conditioning but instead features a water-cooling system that is supposed to keep the facility cool. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid-90s in Paris this week.

Water-cooling systems are generally considered to be more efficient than air conditioning, but there is no way to set an exact temperature, Olympic officials told The Washington Post. The rooms are equipped with thermostats that control the speed of the water flow, which can change the temperature of the room by only 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the report.

Laurent Michaud, the director of the Olympic and Paralympic Villages, told The Associated Press last year that the cooling system is supposed to keep the indoor temperature of the apartments between 73 and 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

The cardboard box beds and the water-cooling system are part of the Olympics’s sustainability efforts to cut the overall carbon footprint of the games, according to the AP.

“There’s water in the walls that’s supposed to be a cooling system, but it really was hot, and we were on like the second or third floor,” Dupre said in the video. “I can’t imagine people on higher floors.”

Chari Hawkins, a US track and field athlete, pointed out the lack of privacy to change inside her apartment in the village in a TikTok post on Saturday.

“There are no curtains. There are no curtains. There are no curtains,” Hawkins repeated in the video.

As a DIY solution, Hawkins showed how she hung a large towel on a “really sticky” part of the window frame to get privacy.

“It works out really perfectly, but I will say you have a time clock,” she said. “Because this — it’s sticky. And it’s going to fall down eventually. So, if I’m getting out of the shower or if I’m changing, I put this up, and I literally change as humanly fast as possible.”

‘Need a Chipotle bowl ASAP’

The food at the Paris Olympic Village has also been the subject of athlete complaints.

Zahria Allers-Liburd, a track and field athlete representing St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, posted a TikTok on Friday in which she gave a thumbs-down gesture at the food.

“Me everyday since having to eat the Olympic village food,” she wrote, adding in the caption, “All jokes aside, I’ve lost 5 pounds in a few days. I need a Chipotle bowl ASAP.”

A spokesperson for the Olympic Games did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider.