A Sports Medicine Doc Weighs In on Those Cardboard Beds at the Olympics

The Olympics are about to begin, but athletes have been settling in to the Olympic Village for days now. With that, there have been plenty of social media posts about accommodations — including the cardboard beds Olympians are sleeping on.

Cardboard beds aren't new to the Olympic Games: They also appeared at the 2020 Olympics, where they gained notoriety after American track and field runner Paul Chelimo wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter that the beds were "aimed at avoiding intimacy among athletes." That motive was later debunked by Irish Olympic gymnast Rhys McClenaghan who jumped up and down on the "anti-sex" beds to test their limitations.

But given that your standard bed isn't made of cardboard, there's still tons of questions surrounding the impact sleeping on a cardboard frame can have on your back. Forget the sex — are they beds even comfortable for sleeping? We tapped a sports medicine physician to weigh in.

Jason P. Womack, MD, is the chief of the division of sports medicine and an assistant professor in the department of family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Cardboard bed frames seem random, but they were designed with sustainability in mind, according to a TikTok shared on the official Olympics account. The beds will be "fully recycled after the Games," which is the big draw, an official explains in the video. (Basically, if standard bed frames were used, Olympic officials would have to figure out what to do with them after the Games are over.)

The beds feature three modules "allowing athletes to choose the firmness of the mattress," the official says in the video. Athletes can also extend the beds as needed based on the size of the athlete.

"It's really about how to get 10,000 bed frames to an area at once," says Jason P. Womack, MD, chief of the division of sports medicine and assistant professor in the department of family medicine and community health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Several athletes have posted on social media about the beds, and the feedback hasn't all been positive. Canoe slalom athlete Evy Leibfarth shared on TikTok that the beds are "mostly cardboard" but stressed that athletes are still sleeping on a mattress. "We're not sleeping on something super hard," she added.

But Aleah Finnegan, a gymnast from the Philippines, said in a TikTok that the bed is "not very soft." She also added, "they're not that comfortable."

Australian water polo player Tilly Kearns said in a TikTok that the beds are "rock hard," before showing her roommate saying that her "back is about to fall off" after sleeping on the bed. But Kearns also shared in another post that her team manager got her a mattress topper, which she was "so grateful for." Before that, Kearns said that she was "waking up every second hour," adding, "I actually thought about going on the floor. I thought about it, I didn't do it."

As a result of the topper, Kearns joked that "you'll be expecting some gold medal performances from here on out from Team Australia."

Womack says it's hard to know how a cardboard bed will impact a person's back, given that everyone's needs are different. An athlete's body type and sleep position can all play a role in their comfort on these beds and mattresses, he says.

It depends. The bed frames themselves appear to be fairly durable. Olympic diver Tom Daley, for example, shared video on TikTok of himself jumping on the bed. "As you can see, they're pretty sturdy," he said. McClenaghan's video also shows him jumping and running on the bed to prove that these beds won't fall apart easily.

Ultimately, the cardboard frame itself "shouldn't change very much in terms of the comfort of the bed," Womack says. Instead, he says that the mattress is really where the support comes from.

But Womack says that the beds "haven't been tested for long-term use" in any scientific studies. "For short periods of time, they're certainly fine," he tells PS.

To stream the 2024 Paris Olympics, you can sign up for a Peacock subscription ($8 per month). The platform will stream every event live and will also offer on-demand options for users to rewatch different competitions from the Games. For the full 2024 Paris Olympics schedule, visit NBCOlympics.com.

Korin Miller is a writer specializing in general wellness, health, and lifestyle trends. Her work has appeared in Women's Health, Self, Health, Forbes, and more.