Swapping pins, sipping alcohol-free beer, dodging Italian presidents - welcome to the Olympic Village

Roaming the Paris Olympic Village, there was no sign of athletes fighting over the last potato at the buffet. Nor was there any evidence of illicit egg smuggling rings beginning to form.

No, despite the various complaints over the village’s relatively meagre food supplies, everything was peaceful, save for the pleasing sound of Gabonese swimmer Noelie Lacour delivering an impromptu piano performance.

Regardless, reminders were never far away that this 330,000sq-site, around five miles north of Paris, is no ordinary place. The Post had been inside the village’s acoustic walls roughly 30 minutes when Italian president Sergio Mattarella, flanked by a well-tailored, inscrutable security detail, busily marched past to add his name to hundreds of signatures and messages scrawled across 10 sturdy pillars near the Village Plaza.

Stealthily emerging back into the sunlight from the village’s infamous dining hall, which was advertising ‘world’, ‘Halal’, ‘Asian’ and ‘French’ menus, we found ourselves strolling behind two Australian rugby sevens players, chit chatting about their team dynamic, unworried about eavesdroppers. The tone was positive but the Aussies left empty-handed after losing a men’s bronze-medal match to South Africa.

Those rugby chaps were among the lucky ones whose competition had already started when we visited.

There was noticeable tension among those strolling narrow roads, dodging the occasional golf buggy or bike as they went. Athletes of all shapes and sizes were like coiled springs, quietly killing time before some of the most important days of their lives.