by Nicole Marschean, Intern,
National Women's Law Center

As I watched the U.S.A. Men’s Hockey team step off the podium after receiving their silver medals, I couldn’t distinguish if I was more upset by the team’s thrilling overtime loss or by the abrupt end of the 2010 Winter Games. In the past two weeks, I have become accustomed to checking the medal standings on Google and coming home every night to watch incredible performances by world-class athletes. Now, I will have to wait another four years for another two-week span of intense winter sport coverage.

Upon reflection, I feel the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games showcased women’s accomplishments, but at the same time has highlighted the inequality still faced by female athletes. Since the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924, the schedule has expanded to include seven sports and over 40 events available to women.

Despite these gains, a glaring exclusion from the 2010 Winter Olympics program is women’s ski jumping. This exclusion also prohibits female athletes from participating in the Nordic combined, which requires ski jumping. These two events earn the distinction of being the only two in the Games that do not include women.

Women’s ski jumping first gained media attention in 2006 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) did not add the sport to the Winter Olympics schedule even though the International Ski Federation (FIS) voted in favor of doing so. In an official press release in November of that year, the IOC stated that women’s ski jumping was “lacking the international spread of participation and technical standard required for the event to be included in the program.” With more than 130 women from 16 countries registered as ski jumpers with the FIS, this event had more of a following than other women’s events previously added to the Olympics, such as ski cross, snowboard cross, and bobsleigh.

As a result of this ruling, women’s ski iumping world champion, Lindsey Van, was a spectator instead of a defender of her record jump—among both men and women—off of the normal ski jump used at the 2010 Games. Another ski jumper, Alissa Johnson, had to watch from the sidelines as her younger brother, Anders, competed in the event.

It is my hope that in four years I’ll be able to watch as these women sail over the competition on a ski slope in Sochi and that I’ll see them stand in their rightful place, on top of an Olympic podium.

View Original Post at womenstake.org

• Filed Under:  
• Olympics, Sports, Winter Games

• Tags:
• sports
• Athletics
• Nicole Marschean