The 2024 Paris Olympics is in full swing, and you may have noticed a record number of LGBTQ+ competitors this year. There are a staggering 146 out queer athletes at this year's Olympic games, with a record breaking amount of out queer men according to OutSports. But those are just the athletes who are out. There are certainly more than just 146 queer folks among the 10,500 athletes, which is part of why Grindr claims it has limited access on the app to explore the Olympic Village.
Grindr, the world's #1 "social networking app", is a digital cruising experience typically based on proximity from one user to another. It's more accurate on location that Google Maps, and can more reliably have a pizza delivery man to your door with a large, hot sausage in under 30 minutes than Dominoes and Pizza Hut combined. However, if your neck of the woods is looking a little dry, you can use the "Explore" feature to peruse any location. If you're looking to make a love connection, you'll have to pay to send messages to those outside your normal range, but there's no premium on window shopping. The world's your oyster!
Well, not the whole world.
Users who have tried to use the explore function to test their luck with an Olympic athlete have found themselves, well, out of luck. The Olympic Village has been blocked from view.
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This isn't the first time Grindr has done this. The Olympic Village was blocked from exploration during the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the 2022 Winter Olympics, both of which were held in Beijing. The company claims this is done to protect the privacy of athletes, especially those competing for home countries where homosexuality is illegal.
This all tracks. There was a now infamous article published by The Daily Beast in 2016 authored by a reporter who used the explore function to look inside the Olympic Village, and outed queer athletes. It has since been removed. Something similar happened after the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. This time, it was social media users continuing to forget that celebrities are people. Users would post videos to TikTok and other social media platforms about, one post boasting in the caption, ""I used Grindr's explore feature to find myself and Olympian boyfriend." These videos often exposed Grindr users's whole faces, and were also eventually removed.
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Those still trying to find an Olympian boyfriend shouldn't lose all hope yet! There are still options. For starters, you could simply become an Olympian yourself. It's a long shot, but it's good to have goals. Barring new found Herculean strength and athleticism, you could always join the rest of us in ogling from afar. And if neither of those are satisfying, and you're still determined to get yourself out there, I'd say set some reasonable expectations.
Is he an Olympian? Perhaps not, but I bet you could find plenty sporty eligible bachelors in one of the nation's many LGBTQ+ sports leagues. Can you explore the Olympic Village? Definitely not any time soon, but if you're looking to make a match somewhere in the wild blue yonder, Grindr's 2023 year in review — the aptly named Grindr Unwrapped — breaks down the highest percentage of top, bottom, and vers users by country. Now get out there! Have some fun!