Getty Image
Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus revealed in a new interview that athletes in the Olympic Village “were living in filth” and never had enough toilet paper.
Titmus, gold medalist in the women’s 400-meter freestyle at both the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2024 Paris Olympics, made these revelations during an appearance on The Project on Thursday.
“The best part was our baristas, we had two baristas down in the bottom that probably worked the hardest in the little Aussie precinct,” she said about the Australian Olympic Committee’s setup in the village. “And I was excited to go down every morning and get a coffee. They did it all up and it felt like home, we had Aussie food, TimTams and chockies, everything.
“But the village isn’t as glamorous as people think,” she added.
“Our bed sheets got changed after first night we were there and then they didn’t get changed for the rest of the time we were there, so we were living in filth,” Titmus explained.
“And another thing was we would have to lie about being roommates so we could scab toilet rolls. We’d run out of toilet roll and then they’d only give us one for four days for the entire apartment.”
Ariarne Titmus also talked about how thin the mattresses were on the infamous cardboard beds in the Olympic Village. (She was lucky, however, in that Tempur sent her a mattress so she didn’t have to sleep on one of them.
“The mattresses that were there were like fishing wire all tangled up, and they were in three seconds, three parts that went together,” Titmus said. “So they weren’t even one big mattress.”
She also talked about how nice it was to come back home to Australia and see her friends and family. Oh, and get a good cup of coffee.
“Honestly, I have a massive coffee thing,” she revealed. “And to get a good cup of coffee was so nice. Honestly, the cup of coffee I had on the plane home was better than any of the coffee I had in Europe the entire time.”