Well, they’re all descended from a long line of ancestors who valued getting laid right behind basic survival. Valued it enough to leave lots of offspring. So what else would you expect. It’s not a very startling concept until you single out humans, with our abstract thinking and long range plans and goals. Throw in our blind spot regarding ourselves and our true motives and people are all like ‘OMG, competition with other humans is often about SEX:eek::eek::eek:???’
The only reason I get up in the morning is that it is a new day with a new possibility of getting laid. So far my plan isn’t going so well. 
But hey I have tomorrow to try again. 
Agreed. I think the article violated Occam’s Razor, by positing a complex explanation when a simple one will do. Namely:
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Young single people like to have sex.
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If you take a bunch of young single people out of their normal environment and put them in a place where they’re living together in close proximity (e.g., an olympic village) there will be lots of hook-ups. This will be more true if the people in question are very physically fit, and still more true if they find themselves in a festive, adrenaline-filled atmosphere.
Let’s see, young very healthy male surrounded by young very healthy females in a compound much like a college campus. Naw, I can’t see how sex could possibly happen.:dubious:
Is he considered good-looking and charismatic? He seems kind of goofy looking to me. And while he seems nice enough, I’d not call him charismatic.
Only by Larry Borgia that I’m aware of, unless we’re referring just to his torso.
Also, I’m a relatively unathletic thirty eight year old woman, and everything I do (except post to the SDMB) is to get laid, just to add to the data pool. 
Just FTR I’ve made my point, which I think should be fairly obvious and not all that controversial, regardless of what you think of Mikchael Pehlps’ appearance. I think repeating myself wouldn’t be much use. If people want to believe in a bunch of pseudo-scientific unfalsifiable just-so stories in order to give themselves a sense of worldy cynicism, they can knock themselves out.
One last question. If you all want to get laid, how come you’re not devoting yourself 24 hours a day every day to some extremly narrow and difficult achievement, if that’s an optimal sex strategy? The Riemann hypothesis still needs proving. Get cracking on it and maybe, after a decade of work, you’ll solve it and slightly increase your chances of copulation.
Because I’m really lazy and it is way easier for me to masturbate to Misty May and Kerry Walsh.
Well, you can certainly make a difference in both quantity and quality with hard work. There’s getting laid and there’s getting laid by Carrie Underwood.
The difference being, of course, that the former is preferable.
As has been pointed out, he’s probably doing a lot better after 8 gold medals.
The quote in the OP didn’t claim that’s all he was going for, just that it’s surely one of the incentives. I think that’s fairly obvious and not all that controversial.
The quote in the OP claims no such thing. Nor did the blog it was taken from. Nor the London Times story that blog referenced. In fact, Michael Phelps featured not at all in those – beyond the use of his name to get some attention.
What they actually talk about is Olympic athletes having sex after their events. The idea that people work to get to the Olympics to have sex is rather absurd – there are far easier ways to get laid.
Brilliant.