At the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, there were plenty of jokes and ironic comments about the 10,000 condoms made available to the 2900 athletes in the Olympic Villages which ran out in just 3 days. A recent Italian study provides an explanation for the miscalculation, debunking a persistent myth: Sex is detrimental to athletic performance.

The survey of 164 athletes suggests that, at least subjectively, sexual activity with orgasm before sleep is more often associated with better perceived sleep — and rarely with worse sleep — whereas the perceived impact on training and competition is mostly neutral. The results, published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, reopen the discussion about recovery, sleep hygiene, and stigma-free counseling in competitive sport.

Measuring the Unsaid

The authors administered an anonymous questionnaire to athletes aged 18-40 (n = 164; 115 men and 49 women) registered with sports federations, collecting information about sexual habits and perceptions of the effects of sex or masturbation with and without orgasm on sleep and performance. Most (125 of 164) practiced team sports.

“The aim was not to measure physiological parameters but to capture an aspect often left unsaid: whether and how athletes interpret the intertwining of sexuality, falling asleep, sleep quality, and performance,” Stefano Borghi, one of the study’s authors and a researcher in the laboratory of Movement Medicine and Sports Sciences at the IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Milan, Italy, explained to Univadis Italy, part of the Medscape Professional Network.

In the sample, the clearest association concerns perceived sleep after sexual intercourse with orgasm: 67.7% reported improved sleep quality after sex with orgasm, and 58.4% reported improved latency (they fell asleep faster).

Masturbation with orgasm showed a similar but less marked trend, with about one in two respondents reporting improved sleep quality (49.1%) and latency (46.9%).

A clinically relevant detail for practice and for communication with athletes is that, in the absence of orgasm, the proportion of “no effect” responses increases and variability grows — a sign that any possible benefit is not automatic but depends on individual experience and likely on context, timing, stress, relationship factors and training load.

On the more sensitive side — the impact on training and competition — the study reports a predominance of neutral responses: After sexual activity or masturbation, especially if with orgasm, perceived performance was more often “the same” than “better” or “worse.”

The study confirms a gender difference in orgasm frequency, with three quarters of male respondents (77.8%) reporting they always achieved orgasm in the month before the survey, compared with just over a third of female respondents (30%). Because orgasm is one of the factors athletes most often associate with better sleep, this gender gap gains relevance for well-being and recovery, as well as for sexual health and communication.

The authors propose a pragmatic interpretation of the study: abandoning generic prescriptions of “abstinence” and focusing on individualized counseling, centered on sleep, recovery, and personal preferences because there is no universal rule.

This story was translated from Univadis Italy.