AC-free ambition for Paris Olympic village melts away

PARIS: 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 on Tuesday (Jul 2).

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 Jul 26-Aug 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 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 Aug 28-Sep 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