Let the women jump!
For as long as I could read and speak, I’ve been an avid Winter Olympics fan. My life comes to a complete halt from the time the cauldron is lit at the host city, to the final awards ceremony. I follow all Winter Olympics sports. I grew up not far from Lake Placid and the 1980 Winter Olympics has special meaning to me. I was a young amateur figure skater then, and I was very proud of all of our women athletes, not just those on ice. Times have changed in those 28 years since. More sports have been added to the games. More countries compete. More female athletes compete. But I’m disappointed to say that there is one sport in which female athletes will not be, but their male peers will be competing in Vancouver, 2010. The sport? Ski Jumping.
This February the IOC (International Olympic Committee) made the (final) decision not to include women’s ski jumping as an official Winter Olympic sport. IOC Chairman Jacques Rogge said “We don’t want the medals to be diluted and watered down, that is the bottom line.” His argument goes on to say that the international sport only has 80 competitors worldwide, and that allowing them to participate in 2010 would dilute the value of the medals. This is very hard for me to swallow, given that a young American women set the Vancouver Olympic Jump Record on January 5th. That’s right. Lindsey Van set the 2010 Olympic Jump Record, and even beat out the male competitors at that event. The president of the Women’s Ski Jumping USA says that Rogge is wrong with those numbers. Deedee Corradini, president of Women’s Ski Jumping U.S.A. says that Norway has between 500 and 600 female fliers and the U.S. has 150. Corradini says “We had 83 women in our Continental Cup last year,” she added. “If you compare that to ski-cross, snowboard-cross, skeleton, luge and bobsleigh, we had more women and more nations competing last year than any of those five existing Olympic winter sports.”
I say, let the women jump. Please, sign the petition to allow the women to jump at the Olympics. Click on the petition link on my blog roll.
This comment is offered for clarity, not on the merits of your position.
Mr. Rogge was simply commenting in February on the decision made in 2006 by the Executive Board of the IOC, and he is one member of it. The response you quoted was to a specific question by a reporter at a news conference. The reason it was asked was due to the fact that it was Mr. Rogge’s first visit to Vancouver since the decision was made, and there was a rather well-orchestrated public-relations campaign that occurred shortly before his visit to push for women’s ski jumping.
The campaign is underway because the drop-dead decision of the IOC to lock in the 2010 program of events and their times is this coming August, so, Mr. Rogge’s comment is not necessarily the final word on the matter.
The IOC’s position is that under rules it has had in place since the mid-90s, the IOC executive made the decision in November, 2006, after reviewing a report by its Olympic Program Commission, which advises the IOC’s executive board on requests by various international sports bodies to include specific events in Olympic Games.
The Commission’s report proposed seven sports be added. The IOC executive board judged all seven events against the same set of criteria — which includes the number of athletes participating in the sport, details of World Championships held by 2006, and noted that women’s ski jumping won’t have had enough of them before 2010.
The Commission recommended that only one of the events put forward should be included, and the IOC Executive Board followed the Commission’s recommendations. Those not included for 2010 were biathlon mixed relay, bobsleigh and skeleton team competition, luge team competition, alpine skiing nation team event, curling mixed doubles and women’s ski jumping.
I thought I’d also point out that the IOC just finished hosting an extensive (and expensive) international conference about encouraging women to become more involved in sport, particularly Olympic sports. There’s information about what it set out to do, and what it accomplished, on the IOC’s website.
Comment by Peter Morgan — March 28, 2008 @ 1:09 am