American athlete Emily Delleman recently took to TikTok to share her experience using Tinder in the Paris Olympic Village.
The 26-year-old athlete decided to explore the dating app during her downtime and shared the journey with her followers. “I was lying in my cardboard bed, scrolling through TikTok, and saw people suggesting changing your location to Olympic Village,” she explained in her video, as reported by SkyNews.
Motivated by other users, she reinstalled Tinder after several years. “The app store ads were saying ‘match with pro athletes using our new feature’… and that got me excited. The expectations were rising,” she recounted. However, her excitement waned as she struggled to find other Olympians on the platform. “I checked my settings and set my location to a one-mile radius, but I only saw two other Olympians,” she continued.
Delleman humorously added, “Parisian men are beautiful; chefs kiss. I don’t know what they put in the water here. I came in expecting to find some interesting connections, but I’ll have to find other forms of entertainment. That’s why you find me on TikTok now.”
Her video quickly went viral, accumulating millions of views, and even drew a playful response from Tinder’s official account, which commented, “Someone tags me in part 2,” according to SkyNews.
This TikTok post added to the burgeoning public interest in how athletes spend their time and cope with the conditions inside the Olympic Village. This intrigue was further fueled by US tennis star Coco Gauff’s revelation that she was the only Team USA women’s tennis player residing in the Olympic Village after accommodation issues forced her teammates to move to a hotel.
Gauff shared a brief tour of their $1.6 billion housing complex on TikTok, noting, “10 girls, two bathrooms. #olympicvillage.” She also mentioned borrowing a mattress topper from the US Archery team to make the thin polyethene mattresses more comfortable.