Why breast-feeding French athletes will be given hotel rooms outside athletes' village at Paris Olympics?

The French Olympic Committee has announced that it will be providing hotel rooms to breast-feeding French athletes during the Paris Olympics 2024 which starts on 26 July. The Olympic Committee has decided to offer hotel rooms to breast-feeding French athletes as children will be barred from the athletes’ village during the Summer Games.

The ground-breaking decision is also inspired by the demands of female athletes and new mothers who have urged the sporting bodies to consider motherhood and parenting while taking decisions. French judo star Clarisse Agbegnenou has been championing the request for a while.

The French Olympic Committee secretary general Astrid Guyart has revealed that breast-feeding French sportswomen will be offered rooms at a hotel a short distance from the athletes’ village where they can sleep with their infants or have their fathers look after them.

Olympic rules mean children can be given passes to enter the athletes’ village under exceptional circumstances, Guyart explained, but the passes are “very restricted”.

A social area for families will also be created at the hotel, she added, with the total cost estimated to be around 40,000 euros ($43,000).

“It’s unprecedented and it’s something we want to become permanent, so that’s not a one-off because it’s the Olympics in Paris,” said Astrid Guyart, head of the Athletes’ Commission which has been advising organisers of the Paris Games.

The Olympics are set to take place from July 26-August 11 followed by the Paralympics from August 28-September 8.

Around 10,000 sportsmen and women are expected to sleep at the athletes’ village which has been specially built in the deprived northern Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen.

With agency inputs