The Most Exclusive Club In The Olympic Village Is The Athlete-Only Gym
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At the most exclusive club in the world, you won’t find any fancy cocktails or canapés. Name dropping will do you no good here—you could spend a lifetime trying to get on the list and still not step foot inside. And once you make it in, the work has only just begun.
The athlete-only gym inside the Olympic Village is one of the most high-tech fitness facilities ever created. Italian equipment company Technogym has been outfitting the Olympic gyms since the Sydney Games in 2000, and within, athletes’ needs are catered to 24 hours a day. Around 400 pieces of equipment line the facility’s walls, precisely mapped out with requests from each country’s Olympic federation. Athletes never have to wait around for a treadmill or to hit the weights. And it’s not uncommon to run into greats like Novak Djokovic or Simone Biles on the treadmill next to you.
There are technically 29 fitness centers for Olympians to use—including one in each of the Olympic Villages within Paris, Marseille, and Tahiti—that cater more generally to the needs of all sport disciplines, and then one center housed at each competition venue that caters to sport-specific needs for practices and warmups. In total, about 1,200 pieces of equipment will be used across these gyms by more than 15,000 athletes between the summer Olympics and Paralympics, which take place in September.
Taking A Look Inside
Each gym is stocked to meet the athletes’ unique needs—so you’ll see different equipment at Roland-Garros, where the tennis players compete, compared to the Chateauroux Shooting Center.
Each country’s Olympic committee puts in a request two years in advance, which allows Technogym plenty of time to prepare its inventory. And if, by chance, anything is missing, gym staff can source more equipment on demand in just a few hours.
Evolving With The Athletes
In the past 24 years, Technogym has learned plenty about outfitting gyms for the greatest athletes in the world and their ever-evolving needs. Recently, there's been a renewed focus on strength training for Olympic athletes, and Technogym answered the call.
“Training has changed a lot,” says Enrico Manaresi, global communications director for Technogym. “Before, they were doing 95 percent of the training on the pitch or on the field, and just a very small part of athletic preparation at the gym. Today, the gym is fundamental.”
Technogym has added plenty of tech to its arsenal too, like Technogym Checkup, a 3D virtual assistant that uses a series of tests to assess an athlete’s mobility, balance, reaction time, and more—then provides a customized workout plan. (This tech is making its debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics but will be available for mass consumption in September.)
Technogym has also outfitted the Olympic Village with a line of strength equipment powered by artificial intelligence. Here's how it works: If you tell a machine you’d like to perform a drop set, it will recognize when you’ve hit your weight limit and automatically decrease the weight for you. (Olympians don’t have time to manually change the plates between sets!) When you’re logged into your Technogym account, it will also remember the weights you used for the next time you hit the gym.
Calling All Olympic-Level Trainers
Fifty trainers, curated from Technogym's network of 2,000 trainers across the globe, staff the Olympic gyms over three shifts each day. Collectively, they have to be able to speak 20 languages to communicate with all the athletes on the ground, which means trainers with the most fitness experience and the most versatile multi-lingual abilities are the ones who snag this ultra-exclusive gig.
Of course, athletes often arrive at the Olympics with their own training team. The U.S. even has its own training facility—the High Performance Center in Eubonne—stocked with their own equipment. But most countries don’t have those sort of resources, so that's where the Olympic Village trainers come in quite handy.
“Our trainers are experts on the product, on the equipment, on the features,” Manaresi says. “Typically every athlete has [their] own trainer, but our trainers are very important to help them take the most from the equipment.”
Home Workout Bench
Technogym
$2350.00
The trainers are also constantly keeping their eyes and ears open for feedback from the Olympians. The Games are a unique chance to hear from this invaluable focus group (a.k.a. Olympic-level athletes), which can in turn inform Technogym’s line of at-home gym equipment. The at-home equipment is, of course, modified from those in Village so that it can be accessible to the everyday athlete. “The Olympics is a learning curve for us,” Manaresi says.
Fueling The Future
That feedback will also inform future Olympics—because yes, Technogym is already in the thick of preparations for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games. Just as athletes’ needs are ever-evolving, their equipment needs to be, too.
Once the Olympic and Paralympic Games are over, the training centers located at permanent sports facilities such as Roland-Garros will remain fully operational for future sporting events like the French Open. Meanwhile, at the Olympic Villages, Technogym will collect the equipment, refurbish it, replace any parts that show wear and tear or need extra love, then resell it. Think of it like selling a second-hand car, Manraesi says, explaining the re-sale "is also a sustainability choice to ensure that no materials are wasted."
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