The Olympics, women’s ski jumping, sexism and hypocrisy

For years, the International Olympic Committee has banned women from long-distance jumping in the Olympic games.

In 2005, IOC member and head of the International Ski Federation, Gian-Franco Kaspar, told me point blank during an interview that it’s just not safe for women’s bodies:

“Don’t forget, it’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”

That seems a little fusty, even for old world European athletic officials.

But the rank hypocrisy of the IOC’s stance was illuminated when Olympic organizers allowed the new sport of “ski cross” into the Vancouver games.

Ski cross has been described as a crash-up derby on skies, with multiple athletes crashing and careening down the same moguls course. Hear ATC host Melissa Block’s story here.

Just last weekend, a male skier from France was paralyzed from the waist down during a ski cross competition in Lake Placid.

Yet women skiers will be duking it out on the ski-cross course in Vancouver.

So why are “the ladies” allowed to ski cross, but not ski jump?

In an interview with ESPN, Bill Marolt, head of the US Ski and Snowboard Association put it this way:

“It’s the IOC looking for opportunities to make the Olympics more relevant to a younger demographic, and they see that in skicross.”

Nice. When money and marketing are on the line, women’s bodies and their lives are fair game.

But for women ski jumpers — some of them so accomplished that they can compete on par with the men — it’s another year on the sidelines.

Last year, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that failing to allow women jumpers to compete in Vancouver is discrimination.

But the justices also ruled that the Canadian courts were powerless to intervene.

I can’t help but think that this unfairness is the first (hopefully the only) serious black mark on these Games.

One thing is clear. Before 2014, someone needs to sort out this nonsense.

And the women whose careers in sport have been cheated deserve a formal apology from the IOC.

Tags: olympics