Italian gold medal-winning swimmer Thomas Ceccon sleeping next to park bench.

He complained about the lack of A/C and noise inside the athletes village.

Saudi rower Husein Alireza discovered Ceccon while taking a walk and found him curled up next to a bench on a sheet, according to Fox News.

This incident occurred a few days after Ceccon failed to qualify for the men’s 200-meter backstroke.

Too tired to compete
Ceccon attributed his performance in the 200-meter backstroke qualifiers to his inability to rest.

“It’s hard to sleep both at night and in the afternoon,” Ceccon said after the race, per Fox News. “Here, I really struggle between the heat and the noise.”

“There is no air conditioning in the village, it’s hot, the food is bad,” Ceccon added. “Many athletes move for this reason. It’s not an alibi or an excuse, it’s the reality of what perhaps not everybody knows.”

In an interview with Access Hollywood, Ceccon described the viral photo of him sleeping as “just a nap.”

The Italian Swimming Federation denied that Ceccon’s nap was related to the conditions in the Olympic Village, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

ANSA also reported that another Italian swimmer, Gregorio Paltrinieri, criticized the conditions at the village, calling it “the worst I have ever experienced” and saying that “athletes are not safeguarded.”

Dr. Chris Winter, a specialist in sleep and athletic performance, told Today that poor sleeping conditions can negatively impact an athletes performance.

“If the athlete starts to believe that, ‘Oh, I’m sleeping so poorly. It’s loud in the Olympic Village, and my roommate snores, and this bed is so uncomfortable, and it’s hot because they’re not air conditioning particularly well,’ those things can impair their ability to perform,” Winter said.