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Tinder users change their locations to the Olympic Village to match with athletes

By PINKY S. ICAMEN Published Jul 29, 2021 10:53 pm

The Olympics is the biggest sporting event in the world, with people from different countries watching it not only to see athletes compete in their respective sports but also, let's admiti it, to lay their eyes on those perfectly chiseled and attractive superhumans (hi, Pita Taufatofua).

In the recent Olympics, it is not a secret that the Olympic Village, which serves as the athletes’ home for the duration of the games, buzzed with Tinder swipes and matches between the athletes themselves.

So, it is not surprising that spectators from all over the world would want to get in the fun and try their luck to strike a match with these athletes, too.

Recently, New York-based comedian Reed Kavner shared on TikTok a hack on how to match with Olympians on Tinder.

Using Tinder Passport, available in a paid service feature of the dating app that allows users to set their location on the app anywhere in the world, Kavner was able to pin his location exactly at the Olympic Village in Tokyo, Japan.

“I paid for Tinder Plus so I can swipe in the Olympic Village and date an Olympian,” Kavner wrote in his TikTok video, which has been viewed over 6.7 million times as of this writing.

@reedkavner

I was on swim team until I was 12 so we'll have that in common

♬ Into The Thick Of It! - The Backyardigans

In the video, Kavner also showed swiping on single athletes like Estonian biathlete Grete Gaim and Canadian swimmer Katerine Savard, whom he eventually matched and connected with.

Kavner told Insider that he had a nice exchange with Savard, who commented on his video with hand-raising emojis. In one of his Q&A videos , Kavner replied to Savard in French as the Canadian athlete said in her Tinder bio that she likes men who speak French.

“Getting a comment from one of the Olympians in the video was something I didn’t expect at all,” he said. “Now there are people on TikTok ‘shipping’ me and Katerine.”

Thanks to Kavner’s Tinder hack, non-athletes have also flocked the Olympic Village to try to match with world-class athletes.

TikTok user Lee Smith (@theotherblondeone) from Australia reportedly posed as a golfer with the hopes of striking romance with one of the athletes. Smith applied the same hack as Kavner’s and eventually matched with several athletes, including Nigerian American gymnast Uche Eke.

According to Perth Now, Smith shared screenshots of her matches on TikTok. She even shared a screenshot from a conversation with French handball player named Ace.

Unfortunately, Smith was reportedly busted and banned from the dating app.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Olympics organizers are not taking any chances when it comes to health and safety of the athletes. With this, the International Olympic Committee released a 33-page playbook that tells athletes to “avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact” to prevent the spread of the virus.

Despite the social distancing rules, the organizers went ahead with the tradition of distributing condoms to athletes but said the intent and goal of doing so was not for athletes to use them at the Olympic Village but to raise awareness by taking them back in their own countries.

Will the pandemic or the IOC rules defeat the call of the thirsty flesh? 

Banner and thumbnail image from AFP