The Paris Olympic village will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling units when athletes arrive later this month in a blow to the event's eco-friendly credentials, reports FRANCE 24.
The organising committee had initially announced they would steer clear of air conditioning in the athletes' accommodation, instead using a geothermal cooling system.
Although designed to be eco-friendly and free of air-conditioning, the Paris Olympic village will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling units when athletes arrive later this month, organisers said Tuesday.
The complex in a northern suburb of Paris was built as a showcase of environmentally friendly technology and has a geothermal cooling system that uses cool water pumped from deep beneath the ground.
But the lack of air-conditioning has long worried some national Olympic teams, with athletes concerned about missing sleep, particularly given the summer heat waves suffered by Paris in recent years.
Organisers devised a compromise that enabled teams to order portable air-conditioning units at their own expense, which can be installed for the duration of the July 26-August 11 Olympics.
"The aim was to provide a very specific solution for athletes who are facing the match or competition of their lives... and who might have requirements for their comfort and recovery which are higher than in a normal summer," the deputy director of the village, Augustin Tran Van Chau, said Tuesday.
"Around 2,500 ACs have been ordered," he told journalists during a media visit to the complex in a suburb north of Paris.
The accommodation complex comprises 7,000 rooms in total, with the geothermal cooling system guaranteeing temperatures inside at least 6 degrees Celsius (11 Fahrenheit) below those outside.
The roughly 40 low-rise towers will host around 10,000 Olympians, and then 5,000 Paralympians during the Paralympic Games from August 28-September 8.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who heads the Olympics infrastructure group Solideo, had ruled out using portable air-conditioners in the village last year, while other officials have stressed that they were not necessary.
"I have a lot of respect for the comfort of athletes, but I think a lot more about the survival of humanity," she told French radio station France Info in February 2023.