Sex By Numbers: Go For the Gold

A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

All that twisting and turning and vaulting of Olympic bodies this week got us thinking…about sex, of course. This week’s Sex By Numbers offers Olympic-themed trivia about everyone’s other favorite sport.

150,000: Number of un-branded condoms delivered to the Olympic Village for the use of the 17,500 athletes who may be inclined to get it on after (or before) their event.

6 Weeks: Amount of time Muhammad Ali would reportedly go without sex before his big fights. Despite this, scientists say that there is no evidence that pre-competition sex reduces performance, endurance or power.

#1: Olympic Judo athlete Kayla Harrison became the first American gold medalist in her event this week. Her victory is even more sweet due to the fact that her sport has not always been kind to her: in 2007, she put her former coach behind bars for sexual abuse.

4th: Place that American hurdler Lolo Jones finished in the 100m hurdles final. Jones gained celebrity status earlier in the summer when she declared on Twitter that, at 30 years old, she was still a virgin.

12th: If the 100 million females who read the 64 international editions of Cosmopolitan made up a country, it would be the twelfth largest nation in the world. It’s fairly likely that their strongest sport would involve inventive sexual positions.

6: In addition to the times of year when the Olympic Games are held, Summer and Winter are also when people are most interested in finding sex. When examining this 6 month seasonality cycle, researchers found a spike in Google searches for dating sites and prostitutes during these times of year.

3: Number of experts—an endocrinologist, gynaecologist and a genetic specialist—on an Olympic “expert panel” which was assembled to determine cases of gender ambiguity at London 2012. Thus far, the panel has not been used.

65%: Those who support same sex marriage seem to be edging ahead of the competition; 65% of Democrats report that they now support the equal right to marry.

Image: The Drum Fauxlympics

Rosie Spinks

Rosie Spinks is a freelance journalist from California with a degree in Environmental Studies. Her work has been published in publications including Sierra magazine, GOOD magazine, the Ecologist, and the Guardian Environment Network. A passion for travel, running barefoot outdoors, and reconnecting people to what is good dominates most of her thoughts. You can follow her writing on Twitter and Tumblr.