Winter Olympics Beds Are Big Step Up From Cardboard Beds In Tokyo
Remember the infamous cardboard beds at the Tokyo Olympic games last year? Well, it turns out athletes at the Winter Olympics won't have to worry about them.
Check out the athletes' more luxurious sleeping arrangements in Beijing below:
American Luger (a sledding event) Summer Britcher posted a video on TikTok, saying: “Not only do we not have cardboard beds here, but it’s as if the Beijing organizing committee said, ‘How can we absolutely just one-up Tokyo?’
"And this is what they went with.”
Britcher then shows a remote with eight buttons, each displaying a different bed position for the user to pick.
After pressing a random button, the bed begins to rise into a comfortable upright position.
Anna Hoffman, an American ski jumper, posted a room tour to Team USA's TikTok also showing off the new beds.
She said: “The beds can actually change different shape. They go from being all flat to being all curvy, so that’s awesome."
Hoffman's room has two of these beds, despite it being just her in the room.
Yep, we can be sure the 2021 athletes must be feeling rather envious of the Winter Olympians.
This is a far cry from the cardboard beds seen in the Tokyo Olympic village last year.
Videos of these cardboard beds began going to viral amid claims they were created to be anti-sex, to avoid athletes catching Covid-19 from one another.
This rumour was spread at first by American distance runner Paul Chelimo, who posted on twitter saying they were 'anti-intimacy' beds.
The claims were later found to be false as the beds were created with sustainability in mind, not preventing people from having sex.
Olympic organisers stated that after the competition was over these beds would be 'recycled into paper products after the Games, with the mattress components recycled into new plastic products'.
A statement read: "The Tokyo Games will go beyond their initial commitment of carbon neutrality, and will remove more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit. Carbon compensation equal to 4.38 million t-CO2 is currently planned.
"A final calculation on emissions will be made when the Games have finished, and this will be included in the Tokyo 2020 post-Games Sustainability Report."
While sustainability is important, hopefully we won't see a return to cardboard beds.
Isobel Pankhurst