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In the run-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, which kick off July 27, a new book reveals just what goes on at Olympic Villages worldwide - and no matter the host country, it's always a struggle keeping booze and condoms in strong supply.
According to the anonymously authored exposé The Secret Olympics - written by a former British competitor - organizers supplied 70,000 condoms to athletes at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The stockpile ran out in a week.
While alcohol and drugs are banned at Olympic Villages, competitors often fill water bottles with booze and smuggle in weed and doping agents.
"When I'm there, I'm in two different gears," says one female US Olympian, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity. "I'm so focused that I see nothing else, or I'm partying my butt off."
While officials don't condone such behavior, they don't condemn it, either - the only thing that matters, say those who spoke to The Post, is that the image of the Olympics remain unsullied.
Or, as the anonymous author writes: "What happens in the Village stays in the Village."
Remember the worldwide outrage and disbelief when swimmer Michael Phelps - who won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics - was caught smoking pot out of a huge bong in 2009? Or, that same year, when a stripper named Theresa White came forward to say that Phelps likes threesomes and short girls, and that he "should get another gold medal for lovemaking"?
If Phelps were a major-sport athlete, none of those revelations would have been surprising.
Olympians, however, are held to an impossibly high standard.
"We could never be part of a reality show," says the female Olympian. "The USOC [United States Olympic Committee] wants a particular image and brand."
Olympic Villages are vast, pre-fab communities, divided into smaller subdivisions by nation. The United States' area has a 24-hour McDonald's, as well as sponsored beer halls: a Budweiser House and a Heineken House.
Everything is free - including the unlimited supply of condoms, stamped with sports-specific logos. (Curlers, for example, get wrappers stamped with little curling stones.)
Olympians, however, say that the insatiable demand for condoms is a giant practical joke.
"It's a tradition - taking so many that they have to replace them," says Todd Lodwick, the 35-year-old-five-time Olympic Nordic combined athlete and a two-time gold medalist. "It's a myth: 'Oh, look at all the sex these Olympians are having!' "
Lodwick admits, however, that Olympians do have more sex than usual at the Olympics.
"How could you not?" he says. "If the opportunity is there and it presents itself . . ."
Lodwick and the female Olympian say that there's a divide among athletes at the Villages: Those who are the elite of the elite, who train with a singular focus and abstain from drugs, sex and booze until their events are over, and those who do not.
"At the Olympic Village, they call it 'Days of Glory,' " says the female athlete. These are the post-competition attempts to fill each remaining day at the Village with as much alcohol-drenched sex as possible.
"You stay up all night and party, and you wait for McDonald's to start serving breakfast at 4:30 in the morning," she says. "You eat, sleep, then get up at 9 or 10 a.m. for press, and then you start partying all over again. Two years ago, it was Day 6 or 7 [of partying] for me, and I was like, 'I quit.' And they were like, 'You call yourself an Olympian?' "
She rallied.
Then there are the lesser athletes who know they have no chance of rating, let alone winning a medal, or whose events are not as physically taxing. Some of these are known to get the party started early, before they've had to compete.
"I could definitely see other athletes doing that to blow off steam," says the female Olympian.
"If I were to reincarnate myself, I'd come back and do curling," says Lodwick. "What other sport can you not be in shape for, and still be considered at top athlete?"
While curlers are held in the lowest esteem athletically, they are considered gold medalists when it comes to partying.
After the female Olympian finished competing at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, she checked out of the Village and went to stay with the curlers, who were off-site at a hotel in Whistler.
"That was a party house," she says. "Curlers are known for drinking. The sport doesn't require that much."
As for the sex, The Secret Olympian writes, "No matter what your type, the Olympic Village can cater [to] it, providing the best physical examples on earth . . . Having completed competition, the athletes need to do something else to burn off their boundless energy. Like thoroughbred horses which haven't had a run for a while, they get frisky."
And given that the Village is its own private, high-security city-state walled off from the real world, "no one need know about your indiscretions."
"I was feeling super-guilty for cheating on my boyfriend," says the female Olympian. "And a fellow athlete said, 'Why? Everyone hooked up last night.' "
The most surprising part of US Olympic tradition? Getting so wasted the night before you take your traditional post-Games trip to the White House that the next morning, as you're shaking hands with the president, you're still drunk.
Olympians arrive in DC the night before, and Ludwick says officials do what they can to keep them in line. "We definitely get a stern pep talk," he says. "It's pretty much: 'You f- -k this up, all of this, for all of you, is done!' "
Then they hit the town.
"It's a big reunion," Lodwick says. "You get completely blotto. By the end of the night, everyone's sleeping in a room they shouldn't be sleeping in."
Then comes the wake-up call.
"It's a sobering experience, knowing you were still drunk at 5 a.m. and are on a bus by 7 to meet the president at 10," he says. "There are smart people on the bus drinking water, and the smarter ones are like, 'F--k it, let's keep this party rolling.' When the Games are over, I'm in peak drunk state."
The female Olympian says her experience at the White House in 2010 was similar.
"It scared the crap out of me," she says. "I woke up with this guy - I drank so much, I had no recollection of what happened. And I'm going to meet the president, and I'm still drunk. Vice President Biden - I think he was smelling my breath. He was so close, I could've licked his nose without moving. I know I reeked of liquor. I was mortified, but they were all smiling."
All morning, she says, the entire US Olympic team was struggling. "We were texting each other about how much agony we were in," she says. "It was hilarious."
Being drunk at the White House, Lodwick says, has been a tradition as long as he's been competing - and, as with every other event, it's something that the athletes gear up for.
After the Games, says Lodwick, "You feel the energy of everyone being done. It's like, 'Holy s--t!' There's an energy felt around blowing it out. It's a f--king blast. Everyone's like, 'See you in two months at the White House!' "
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