Paris has seen hot weather this week, with just a few days to go until the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. On Friday and Saturday temperatures were well above 30 degrees, and warmer conditions are expected to continue into the games.
Despite the sweltering Parisian summer, organisers have decided not to install air conditioning at the Olympic village.
Instead they are using heat pumps to cool athletes' rooms, according to the sports daily L'Equipe, but several teams — including Finland — have decided to bring their own air conditioning units to the games.
The Olympic Committee sourced the extra equipment.
"That's all sorted for the Finnish team," said Leena Paavolainen, the Olympic Team's director. "On these scorching hot days, it's been noticed that air conditioning is necessary."
Finnish officials did not hesitate to organise the air conditioning once they knew of organisers' plans.
"The decision was made really quickly," said Paavolainen. "Now I can already say that it was the right decision."
Finland is not the only team to have arranged extra cooling for their accommodation.
Contractors said last year that they were building rooms that would be six degrees cooler than the outside temperature. Air conditioning could have been added to the facilities, but that would have increased the carbon footprint substantially.
Organisers have said that they want to anticipate and reduce carbon emissions associated with the games, and claim facilities constructed for the games will have a 47 percent lower carbon impact than conventional construction projects.