Olympian Ilona Maher jokes about finding her match at the Olympic Village: ‘I’m here to find love’
A gold medal isn’t the only prized possession on Ilona Maher’s mind as she heads to Paris for the 2024 Olympics.
The US Women’s Rugby star joked she’s ready to find her love match as she resides with fellow athletes at the Olympic headquarters for the next few weeks.
“I cannot wait to get into the Olympic Villa, it’s gonna be a crazy summer,” she said on TikTok Wednesday. “Honestly, I’ll probably be the fittest bird in there.”
“It’s called the Olympic Village, this isn’t ‘Love Island,'” a woman interrupted from behind the camera, referring to the Netflix reality show about finding love.
“Yeah, I guess if we wanna say that,” Maher added. “But I still wanna try to couple up early on. It is the early days but at the end of the day, I’m there to find love.”
“No, you’re not, not love, you’re there to play rugby,” the unidentified female clapped back.
The athlete appeared to have swiftly found a contender as she wrote in the caption, “I got a text!!
“You can find Love AND play rugby,” the official account for the 2024 Paris games commented.
Two-time Olympian Tyler Downs also alluded to finding a summer fling as he took to TikTok to show a video of himself staring down a bombshell.
“When a hot new bombshell enters the Olympic Villa,” the US springboard diver wrote. “Everyone here is gorgeous.”
Event organizers anticipated that athletes would be sexually active while staying in the Olympic Village so they ordered 300,000 condoms to be included in participants’ welcome kits.
However, athletes’ beds in the village were built out of cardboard to allegedly avoid “intimacy among athletes” as USA runner Paul Chelimo previously claimed they couldn’t withhold sexual activity.
The durability of the beds — dubbed “anti-sex” beds — has since been tested out by several athletes, including British diver Tom Daley.
