SAINT DENIS, France – When he checked into Olympic Village earlier this week, one of the first things South Africa badminton coach Dillan Schaap noticed was how quiet it got at night. Streets that are bustling with world-class athletes during the days, trading pins and enjoying the village’s many amenities, get sleepy when the sun goes down. “There’s so much discipline,” Schaap told USA TODAY as he sat in the village’s beauty and grooming salon waiting for one of his athletes and her friend during a village media tour Thursday.
“You’re waking up early in the morning, there’s people running and exercising already. By the time you go to bed at like 10 o’clock there’s very few athletes walking around, they’re all doing their thing in their rooms and stuff. “I think that’s the big takeaway is that you think that all the work gets done, you get to the Olympics and now you just compete, whereas it’s not like.
We have our training sessions, we got to the arena but in between that we do sessions here when we need to. You do physical exercise here if you need to. These players are training throughout the Olympics as well.
You don’t just stop training just to compete, which I think for me was a really cool aspect.” The village, built in a Paris suburb that formerly housed old industrial buildings, can accommodate during the and another 8,000 athletes in next month’s Paralympics. It has a two-story gym with an attached mental wellness center dimly lit.