2010 Winter Olympics

The Canadian government has been trying for well over a year to get the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include women’s ski jumping at the Vancouver games. The IOC has repeatedly denied any requests to make women’s ski jumping part of the Winter Olympics. A couple of months ago I heard a story on NPR (I think it was one of Diana Nyad’s pieces for her radio segment, called The Score, which airs during All Things Considered) about the popularity of the sport among girls in Canada. Several athletes and their parents were interviewed and they made some compelling arguments against the IOC’s position that women’s ski jumping has not developed enough to warrant inclusion for the 2010 games. Apparently there are world-class women’s ski jumpers from 17 different countries, while a few sports already included in the games have narrower participation than that. Also, it has been proven that women jumpers do not incur more injuries than male jumpers and the range of jump distances at competitions in rapidly narrowing to produce a range equal to that of the male jumpers. One interesting method of protest, used by the parents of a Canadian would-be Olympic ski jumper, is to pay less taxes. The government is paying for the Olympic venues, including the ski park and its giant ramp used for ski jumping, largely with public funds. As such, parents of this female ski jumper have determined that if their daughter is barred from using the facilities then they should be exempt from pay for them. This would be an interesting topic to investigate further, in some ways I doubt the IOC is engaged in a policy of blatant sexism, a detailed reading of the actual decisions made by the committee might shed some light on their real reasons.