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Ex-Olympian Louie Vito On The Secret To Hooking Up At The Olympics

How To Hook Up At The Olympics (Even If You're Not An Athlete)

February 23, 2018

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If you're familiar with snowboarding, chances are you know Louie Vito. The Ohio-native competed for Team USA at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 and he's a mainstay on the pro circuit.

If you don't know Vito for his skills on the slopes and the pipe -- he was the first to land a frontside double cork 1080 in competition -- perhaps you know him for his legendary partying. Vito is known to live it up with celebrity buddies Steve Aoki or Lil' John, or athletes like Terrell Owens or Lebron James' business associate, Maverick Carter. He also makes the best of the snowboard circuit, but without hurting his competitive edge -- he quit drinking seven years ago.

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Vito couldn't compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics due to an unfortunate back injury, but Toyota brought him to PyeongChang as a fun-loving guy to cheer on their team of athletes, which also includes snowboarding phenom Chloe Kim, freestyle skier Torin Yater-Wallace and the legendary Ted Ligety.

AskMen caught up with Vito at the bottom of the Men's Ski Halfpipe Qualifiers to get the inside scoop on Olympic partying and to ask if he has any advice on hooking up with an athlete (for journalism purposes, of course).

AskMen: As an athlete, you’ve spent the last four years trying to be the best at your sport. Obviously, you want to do well, and I don’t want to downplay that. But is one of the motivations of the Olympics partying with the other athletes and knowing you can finally let loose?

Louie Vito: For snowboarding, it’s back to back, to back, to back qualifiers for the U.S. and then you go [to the Olympics and] it’s the first time you can really just breathe. You know, let the weight off. You’re at the Olympics -- it’s like a dream come true for so many people. Then you make the memories of ‘I competed at the Olympics, this went well, but boy was it lit after the Olympics.’

AM: Yeah, I think when we talk about the Olympics we never think about the relief after.

LV: Yeah, athletes are cruising around all the time. You just gotta find the poppin’ spot.

AM: How do you find that spot?

LV: Normally the village is really tight on security 'cause of all the athletes. The hard thing with the village, though, is you might be with a bunch of people that are done competing, but then you have these people that are still competing. So a lot of time a lot of the athletes want to get out of the village... It’s nice when you’re up in the mountains because they normally have the city village and the mountain village, and I think you might just ask around because up in the mountains there aren’t that many spots to go to. So you kinda just pop around.

AM: Or maybe you use dating apps?

LV: I’ve heard the dating apps have been poppin’ between Tinder and Bumble even.

[Note: Tinder reported a 644% increase in matches in PyeongChang with the most-swiped athletes being female snowboarders and male bobsledders.]

AM: So those apps are the top two, you’d say?

LV: I definitely know there’s a lot of athletes on them, on Tinder especially. That’s been the most popular one for people I know.

AM: Had any success with it yourself?

LV: I’ve been on Tinder like for a day, just when [I was] laying in bed. A lot of my friends were using Tinder because it's the easiest way to link up with people, especially if they might be on a different schedule than you. Because if you’re an athlete in the village you might not see them. It’s an easy way to connect with them without having to do too much work.

AM: If you’re using Tinder in normal life, maybe you have more time to chat and wait. But here at the Olympics, there’s not much time. So then does it become more of a hookup app?

LV: I think the Tinder thing is great because if you make the settings to the vicinity that you’re in, you can pretty much see everybody that’s on Tinder in a short amount of time. So it speeds up the process, you’re not going through people that are on vacation, you’re not going through a lot of people who live around here, it’s literally just people who are here for the Olympics -- and normally people that come for the Olympics want to have a good time. It’s kind of almost like Vegas in the sense that, 'I’m at the Olympics, I’m here for five days, let’s get after it here.'

AM: So, getting after is… hooking up?

LV: Having a good time (laughs), whatever that might be for each person. But it’s the Olympics. Athletes want to have great Olympic memories and they just worked their a*ses off to get and they’re ready to enjoy it now.

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AM: Does it become sort of like a college dorm in there?

LV: It is like a college dorm because the layouts of the room are like a dorm. You’re usually sharing a room with a friend that’s on your team in your same sport, so most nations it’s two to each bedroom. And it looks like a dorm, you have a cafeteria like a dorm. And after your event, you’re gonna party like you’re in college.

AM: Do you think if you’re not an athlete you have a good chance of meeting an athlete on Tinder?

LV: One hundred percent I think you have a chance. Because in most sports you know everybody, ‘So and so hooked up with so and so and now I’ve gotta see them next week at this event.’ Here it’s like: this hot Aussie that came to support a friend in biathlon or whatever, you don’t have to worry about seeing that person ever again. [Or,] he’s a stud from another country, he’s got that cute accent and you’re ready to go. And it just adds to the story.

AM: Do you have advice for anyone who wants to hook up with an Olympic athlete?

LV: You can’t be a fanboy. Keep it cool, you can talk about the sport or whatever, but I wouldn’t make it seem like they're more on a pedestal to you and they're a go-get (a catch) because they're an athlete at the Olympics. Treat it normally, then you’ll be fine — it’s just the benefit that they are an athlete.