I contemplated including this item in yesterday’s Winter Olympics WTFs, but really, no one should be surprised. If you put several thousand world-class athletes in a pen together, they start to get frisky.

That’s why the Vancouver organizers have laid in a stock of 100,000 condoms, which works out to 14 for each of the 7,000 athletes, coaches, trainers and officials housed in the Games’ two villages.

The distribution of free condoms at the Olympics goes back at least to 1992 and Barcelona. In 2000, Sydney organizers thought that 70,000 would be enough. They were wrong and had to send out for 20,000 more. Beijing also ordered 100,000 condoms with an Olympic motto: Faster, higher, stronger.

Even better, the U.S. Curling Association has their own brand of condom, “Hurry Hard” (a curling phrase used to encourage faster ice sweeping). Fantastic.

I applaud the encouragement of safe sex, but ‘Faster’? ‘Hurry’? Olympic athletes need to learn that some things shouldn’t be races.

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