04/25/24
July 13, 2009
Women Lose Battle to Ski Jump in Winter Olympics: A Canadian province's Supreme Court ruled Friday it doesn't have the authority to force the International Olympic Committee to offer women's ski jumping at the next Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Fifteen female ski jumpers went to court, contending their exclusion violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. "All these little girls coming up, a lot of their dreams are crashing," said Katie Willis, a plaintiff who may now quit the sport. The web site Let Women Jump states that women's ski jumping is "the only activity in the Olympic Winter Games that does not allow women to compete."
I understand the argument that you have to have a certain number of countries and competitors to make it an event worth hosting, but what about the idea of having a combined ski jumping event for both men and women. I'll admit that I don't know enough about the sport to know whether this is an equitable solution to both sides, but it would allow the current women jumpers to compete, and it would also build more interest amongst women that perhaps someday there would be enough to have two events.
posted by bender at 08:12 AM on July 15, 2009
bender, it's a hard sell to add anything in the modern era -- Jacques Rogge is very strongly against adding new sports, and has shown himself willing to drop them (witness baseball and softball). This is what makes it a bit surprising he hasn't just axed men's ski jumping as well...if we take the IOC's statement at face value, that is. The "number of countries competing" standard would put just about every winter games event on shaky ground if it were rigorously applied, after all, and a lot more would follow if you were to rigorously apply the standard of number of athletes competing (bobsled? luge? skeleton?).
posted by lil_brown_bat at 11:46 AM on July 15, 2009
Additional relevant information from an article on npr.org:
"...the IOC's explanation for the decision not to include women's ski jumping in the 2010 Winter Games: "Our decision was based on technical issues, without regard to gender."
Those technical issues include the number of women ski jumping at an elite level and the number of countries competing in the sport. IOC officials have argued that too few women and countries compete to justify Olympic competition.
Fenlon addressed that directly in her ruling: "If the IOC had applied the criteria for admission of new events to both men's and women's ski jumping events," she wrote, "neither group would be competing in the 2010 Games."
Also:
The ruling means that the ski jumper who holds the distance record on the K95 "normal hill" in Vancouver won't get to compete at the games. Lindsey Van, 24, of Park City, Utah, has jumped farther than any man on the Olympic hill.