French Olympic Committee will provide hotel rooms for breastfeeding athletes for Paris Olympics this summer held from July 26 to Aug 11. But I am not sure if this is only for French athletes or available to all athletes who are breastfeeding.

The athlete’s village, which was built in the poor suburb of Saint-Ouen, north of Paris,¹ and will have a population of ten-thousand athletes, traditionally bans children.²

But French judo star Clarisse Agbegneno, campaigned for needs of new moms, so now they will have hotel rooms near the village, where they or their partners can stay with their infants. The village will still be very restricted, so there’s also a social area for families at the hotel. The Olympic Committee hopes that this will become a regular part of the games.

The total cost is estimated to be €40,000 or £34,200 or $43,242.48.

Sources

Gritt, Emma. 5 March 2024. “New Allowances Made For Breastfeeding Athletes At Paris Olympics.” Women’s Health.

Moses, Claire. 28 June 2024. “Dutch Olympic Organizers Defend Participation of Athlete Convicted of Rape.” New York Times.

Washington Post. 18 Nov 2017. “290 coaches, officials tied to U.S. Olympic groups have been accused of sexual misconduct since 1982.” Chicago Tribune.

Footnotes

1. One of multiple controversial issues involving the Paris Olympics, and the French have a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to protesting: for example #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin (“I’ll poo in the Seine on June 23”) ↩︎
2. I initially presumed that this had to do with supervision and distractions to athletes. But then I read an article about the Dutch volleyball player, Steven van de Velde, convicted for the sexual assault of a twelve year old and I needed to know if there were other athletes on the sex offender list and yes, as well as coaches. It’s been a long-standing issue. I am not sure that the traditional ban on children in the athlete’s village is to prevent conflicts with laws around child sex offenders being near children or having to notify people in the area of their criminal history but… yeah. Some of the Olympic athletes themselves are children– which in and of itself is a contentious issue. ↩︎