Women's Ski Jumping: Still Not in the Olympics

Wow, did I really blog about this over a year ago? It seems much closer....

Anyway, the story. A group of empassioned women's ski jumpers have been trying hard to make women's ski jumping an Olympic sport. I first blogged about it, as I said, over a year ago. Let me do some digging...ah! Here's my original blog entry.

To fill in the gap from my last blog entry, this group of women's ski jumpers decided to sue VANOC, the organizing committee of the 2010 Winter Olympics, citing that it was sexual discrimination and thus a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. VANOC's defense was that they answer to the International Olympic Committee, not the federal or provincial governments, so the Charter doesn't apply. The supreme court...sided with VANOC.

What more we missed in the past year: Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said that there are very few women's ski jumpers in the world, and that to make it an Olympic sport would "dilute the winners." The women countered that there are many Olympic sports that have far fewer competitors than women's ski jumping. The IOC points to their rules that say, before being considered an Olympic sport, you had to have held at least two world championships in that sport. The first women's ski jumping world championship was earlier this year. The women counter that that criteria was waved from the IOC regulations in 2007.

My opinion: it's starting to look like getting women's ski jumping into the 2010 Winter Olympics is a bit of a lost cause. Time to regroup and focus your efforts on getting them into the 2014 games!

Here's the CBC's story.

And, for a chuckled, courtesy of Cracked.com, here's what women's ski jumping has to compete with to become an Olympic sport.