Let Them Eat Sweat: No AC for Olympians, Said French Greenies

“Fish and guests start to stink in three days,” goes the old epigram — but not if French Olympic organizers bent on surrendering to summer heat have their way.

That is, since they wouldn’t provide the athletes they’re hosting air conditioning, citing greentopian priorities, the competitors may stink after one night’s fitful sleep.

Two years ago, athletes complained about no internet, dirty rooms, and subpar food at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. But the Paris Olympics, which already shocked the world with an anti-Christian opening ceremony featuring an offensive Last Supper parody, is apparently looking to make such standards status quo.

The Los Angeles Times has the story:

Instead of installing A/C to keep housing safe and comfortable for thousands of athletes staying in the Olympic village, organizers planned to rely on a geothermal system that pipes in cool water underneath the floors. But their assurances that the system was capable of keeping indoor temperatures about 11 degrees cooler than outdoors did not inspire much confidence during a year that’s on track to be the hottest on record.

The plan prompted concerns from many countries — including the United States — that runners, gymnasts, swimmers and other athletes in the biggest competition of their lives would not get the rest and recovery they need to perform their best as temperatures reach the upper 80s and 90s. As Matt Carroll with the Australian Olympic Committee put it last year, “We’re not going for a picnic.”

Is AC Really Necessary?

A few observers (such as commenters here) have complained about coddled athletes who should be able to handle heat. And as an ex-professional sportsman, I’ve no sympathy for complaints about heat during competition; an expert athlete must cultivate a state of conditioning where high temperatures feel normal (been there, done that).

Such efforts are frustrated, however, if you’re unable to get good rest because you’re tossing and turning at night on flypaper-like bed sheets. And while AC may not be “natural,” neither is living in heavily urbanized environments surrounded by heat generating devices and heat-holding concrete. That — and AC to counteract it — is part of what’s known as civilization.

How Much Will CO2 Emissions Be Reduced?

The last term, though, is a dirty word to greentopians. As commentator Monica Showalter writes on the Olympics fiasco:

Just got done running a practice Marathon or a 400-meter sprint at a speed as fast as humanly possible, in the Paris summer heat wave? Just finished a practice session of soccer or basketball? Just got done lifting 1,076 pounds of weights?

No air conditioner for you, bub, sweat it out. Too bad if you don’t like it, the Paris committee has a planet to save.

This is no exaggeration. Consider: “In the lead-up to the Games, French officials were uncompromising in their view that A/C would be unnecessary and unacceptable because of the impact of energy consumption on the climate,” the Times also tells us. “‘I have a lot of respect for the comfort of athletes, but I think a lot more about the survival of humanity,’ Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told a French radio station last year.” Seriously?

France derives 68 percent (leading all nations) of its electricity from nuclear power. In other words, unless her brain has been frozen by the AC she likely enjoys whenever fancying it, Madame Mayor has to know the Olympics’ policy won’t reduce CO₂ emissions one iota. It’s all posturing — symbolism over substance.

It’s now yesterday’s news, too. The Times additionally tells us that complaints forced event organizers to relent and allow teams to order their own AC units and transport them to the Olympic village on their own dime. The paper further points out, however, that this tilts the playing field: Poorer nations’ teams may not be able to afford this luxury. So while in France there’s a bit more liberté now, égalité is out the window thanks to left-wing hangups.

That’s not all, either. Again mirroring Beijing, 2024’s Olympic athletes have also complained about cramped conditions, poor food (lack of protein), and “recyclable cardboard beds.” (Really, you can’t make this stuff up.)

It’s Easy Being Idealistic When You Don’t Have to Live With Your Ideals

All this said, the spirit behind the aforementioned isn’t unique; rather, it’s typical leftist outsourcing of sacrifice. Just consider the liberal NYC parent who, unhappy about a plan to integrate his kid’s Brooklyn school, said in 2015, “It’s more complicated when it’s about your own children.” Somehow, suddenly, he no longer viewed “Our strength lies in our diversity” as axiomatically true.

This prompted National Review to dub Brooklyn “the Capitol of Liberal Hypocrisy.” But the competition is stiff. Just consider the plight of “Mr. D,” a multiple sclerosis patient living in Gothenburg, Sweden. Mr. D was denied a more effective and expensive medication — even though he was willing to pay for it — because, wrote columnist Walter Williams in 2009, “bureaucrats said it would set a bad precedent and lead to unequal access to medicine.”

Now, exit questions: Do you think a Swede in the government’s upper echelons or some other connected pseudo-elite would’ve been denied a life-improving medication and essentially told “Stay crippled in equality’s name”?

Do American pseudo-elites (e.g., Nancy Pelosi) “diversify” their neighborhoods as they preach others should do? As pundit Tucker Carlson put it, where they live it still looks like 1955.

And do you suppose Mayor Hidalgo and the other well-heeled greentopians would deny themselves AC (and creature comforts generally), even while buzzing around on their private jets on their way to a climate conference?

This story’s moral: When you’re a pseudo-elite whose best event is pretending to care, you stick the landing and get the gold every time when stickin’ it to the little guy.