'No AC' ambition for Paris Olympic village melts away
The Peninsula
Paris: The Paris Olympic village, which was designed without air conditioning to reduce carbon emissions, will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling...
Paris: The Paris Olympic village, which was designed without air conditioning to reduce carbon emissions, will be fitted with 2,500 temporary cooling units when athletes arrive later this month, organisers said on Tuesday.
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, whose athletes are 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 July 26-August 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.