When word first hit that the beds in Tokyo’s Olympic Village were made of cardboard, people came to one immediate — and fair — conclusion: That forcing the world’s most talented athletes to sleep atop what would undoubtedly be your cat’s new favorite plaything would be one surefire way to discourage this year’s Olympic athletes from increasing their potential COVID risk by getting up to any sexual shenanigans. (Has the IOC never heard of a floor?!) While, sadly, that these cardboard beds were meant to discourage athletes from banging their fellow Olympians turned out to be a rumor, that didn’t stop Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert from making what was essentially the same joke about the pulpy sleeping pods on their Monday night shows after a video from Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan went viral.
“Well guys, the Olympics are almost here and the athletes in the Olympic Village are sleeping on beds made of cardboard, and some people think that they’re meant to discourage any intimacy,” Fallon explained. “That’s nice: You finally reach your Olympic dreams and have to sleep on an Amazon box… That’s right, ‘cause of COVID, organizers want to make sure every athlete is as celibate as a badminton player… Yet everyone’s been talking about these beds, so a gymnast from Ireland put them to a test in a viral video that he posted.”
Fallon was convinced that the beds worked just fine, “as long as you have the body of a 70-pound Irish gymnast.” His bigger issue was with the way that McClenaghan demonstrated the bed’s durability: by jumping up and down on it, as if to suggest that was the gymnast’s signature method for partaking in a bit of how’s your father.
Over on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert had the same idea. He warned viewers that it’s only a matter of time before “we could see a return to pandemic lockdowns” because COVID infections has risen almost 70 percent in the past week alone—and in all 50 states. Still, Colbert seems to feel confident that, based on McClenaghan’s professional testing of “the structural integrity of the bed,” no one that particular gymnast comes into contact with will contract coronavirus as the Irish lad clearly does not know how to bone.
McClenaghan deemed the anti-sex rhetoric “fake news,” while Colbert described it as “great news for randy Olympians and even better news for anyone who has sex with that guy.”
You can watch both clips above.