Of the American men, he was predicted to have the best chance at the all-around-he was second at Worlds-but he fell off the pommel horse and stepped out of bounds on the floor exercise. In the team competition, they finished fourth. The gymnast, though well-satisfied by the hurdler, listens and feels wistful for that kind of exultant, lusty celebration. Through the wall, they hear the individual all-around silver medalist having furious sex with a Frenchman who throws the discus. His roommate had agreed to sleep across the hall, on the floor between a rings specialist and the gymnastics team’s old warhorse, age twenty-eight, who is at his third Games and spends most of his time icing his knees. She and the gymnast are in a narrow twin bed, his. They were to match her gold-painted acrylic fingernails and the gold track shoes she wore even though she was never expected to medal and did not get past the quarterfinals, in which she’d fallen over the second hurdle. Her hairdresser back in Miami bleached orangey streaks into her hair that are meant to be gold. The hurdler, a woman, is tall and lean and brown. The gymnast, a man, is short and white and, toes to shoulders, an isosceles triangle. Hamilton Cain, contributing editor at Oprah Daily Like the aviatrix in Great Circle, Shipstead is a fearless explorer, navigating the thorny contradictions of our humanity with grace and confidence. And from this casual coupling comes a gorgeous meditation on the dimming of expectations and the solace of sex.Ī resident of Los Angeles, Shipstead is the author of three novels, including last year’s exhilarating Great Circle, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of Oprah Daily’s Favorite Books of 2021. Both have watched the lure of gold, the years of hard work, leak out like helium from a balloon. “They have nothing to show but perfection.… Their bodies have been trained to sweat they gleam with it.” Both have failed to medal: The hurdler tripped in her heat, while the gymnast tumbled off the pommel horse. “They have left the lights on because why not?” Shipstead writes. “In the Olympic Village,” Oprah Daily’s exclusive excerpt from Maggie Shipstead’s forthcoming collection of short stories, turns on a one-night stand between two American athletes-a white male gymnast from Kansas and a Floridian hurdler, a woman of color-as they linger in bed, basking in the afterglow.