Athletes competing at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games have reportedly run out of condoms just three days into the Games after the organisers cut the supply from 300,000 to 10,000.
According to the Italian daily La Stampa, the organisers distributed fewer than 10,000 condoms for the Games, far fewer than the 300,000 provided to athletes at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. With close to 3,000 athletes participating in Milan 2026, the limited supply was quickly depleted.
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Sold out
An unnamed athlete told La Stampa that the contraceptives “sold out in just three days,” adding that officials promised additional supplies but had not confirmed when they would arrive.
The governor of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, defended the initiative in a social media post last week, insisting that the distribution of free condoms is a long-standing Olympic tradition.
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“Yes, we provide free condoms to athletes in the Olympic Village. If this seems strange to some, they are unaware of the established Olympic practice. It began in Seoul in 1988 to raise awareness among athletes and young people about sexually transmitted disease prevention, something that should not cause embarrassment,” Mr Fontana wrote.
At Milan 2026, the condoms were distributed with the message “Health first: prevention and common sense,” alongside the Lombardy regional emblem.
However, La Stampa attributed the rapid depletion of condoms to what it described as an unusually conservative distribution strategy by the organisers, noting that the Milan 2026 figures were “not particularly generous.”
Olympic condom tradition
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) began distributing free condoms at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics as part of broader sexual health and HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns. Since then, the practice has become a staple of both the Summer and Winter Games, often accompanied by public health messaging.
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, athletes reportedly received around 300,000 condoms, an average of two per athlete per day.
The Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics
The Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics is jointly hosted by Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in northern Italy, with events spread across venues in Lombardy, Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige regions.
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The Games feature athletes from more than 90 countries competing in winter sports such as skiing, ice hockey, figure skating, snowboarding, biathlon, and bobsleigh.
The Winter Olympics, first held in Chamonix, France, in 1924, are organised every four years and attract thousands of elite athletes from around the world. Unlike the Summer Olympics, which host over 200 nations, Winter Games typically draw fewer countries due to the specialised nature of winter sports and climatic requirements.
