MILAN, Italy (AFP) — It’s not just on Valentine’s Day that competitors at the Winter Olympics have been embracing the free condoms on offer at the athletes’ accommodation.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed on Saturday 10,000 condoms have been snapped up by athletes at the Milan-Cortina Games, which began on 6 February.

“10,000 have been used, for 2,800 athletes. Go figure, as they say,” IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said with a smile at the daily media briefing.

Mialitiana Clerc, a 24-year-old alpine skier from Madagascar, said she had seen the free condoms being snapped up fast at the last Winter Olympics, in Beijing four years ago.

“I am not so shocked because I know that at the Winter Olympic Games there are a lot of people using condoms because I saw it in Beijing already,” she said.

“There were a lot of boxes at the entrance of every building where we were staying and every day, everything had gone from the box,” said Clerc, who was speaking at the briefing as a recipient of an IOC scholarship.

“I already know that a lot of people are using condoms, or giving them to their friends outside of the Olympics because it’s a kind of gift for them.”

Olympic Athletes’ Villages have long been reputed as a hotbed of sexual liaisons between testosterone-charged competitors.