Olympic Sized Gender Discrimination

A couple of days ago, a particular story caught my eye. In the year 2010, gender discrimination is alive and well in the Olympics of all places. Women ski jumpers have once again been blocked from participating in the Olympics.

According to TIME magazine,

Women ski jumpers have petitioned to join every Winter Olympics since Nagano in 1998, and each time they have been denied by the International Olympics Committee (IOC). In fact, ski jumping is the only Olympic discipline to remain men-only. (Technically, Nordic combined is also limited to males, but that’s because it includes ski jumping.) In 1991, the IOC announced that all future Olympic sports must be open to both genders, but the rule didn’t apply to sports that already existed — and as one of the 16 original events in the inaugural 1924 Winter Games, ski jumping was definitely one of them.

Gian-Franco Kasper, president of the International Ski Federation, had the following to say,

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.

Are you freaking kidding me? ESPN has the following to say about these ridiculous claims,

[The] dangers for men and women are the same. Statistically, ski jumping is far safer than alpine skiing. There are no physical attributes that make it more dangerous for a woman than a man.

The men should feel lucky that women aren’t allowed to compete. Lindsey Van, probably the most well known woman in the sport, holds the record for the longest jump off of Whistler – the ski jump specifically built for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

ESPN also put together the following segment for Outside the Lines:

You can show your support for women’s ski jumpers at their homepage: http://www.wsjusa.com.

A documentary on the rise of women’s ski jumping was also showed at the Sundance Film Festival this year. You can find our more about it at http://www.womenontopthemovie.com.