Category: Sports

You know why there’s no women’s ski jump in the Olympics?

Both Johnsons are among the best ski jumpers in the world. Alissa is ranked ninth among the top women who compete, about 141 spots higher than her brother sits in the men’s rankings. But only 16-year-old Anders is preparing to compete for the U.S. Winter Olympic team this week in the Alps north of Turin. Not because Alissa can’t fly far. But because women ski jumpers aren’t allowed in the Olympics, for reasons older than the hills.

Because the IOC is worried about jostling the jumpers’ girlie parts.

To anyone acquainted with the history of women’s sports, the thudding excuses the women ski jumpers are given for their exclusion from the Games are sadly, ridiculously familiar. Gian-Franco Kasper, head of the International Ski Federation, has said, “Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. Don’t forget, [the landing] it’s like jumping down from, let’s say, about two meters to the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”

…

The international federation will take another vote this spring on whether women should jump in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. And Alissa said, “So far, we’ve been told every excuse in the book. That it’s too ‘dangerous’ for girls. That there aren’t enough of us. That we’re not good enough. That it would damage our ovaries and uterus and we won’t be able to have children, even though that’s not true. It’s so outdated, it’s kind of funny in a way. And then it’s not.”

Never mind that women are already competing as ski jumpers professionally, never mind that these world-class jumpers are available for examination to find out if this is true, never mind that ski jumping does not actually result in a hard landing if done right, never mind that Olympic officials seem not to mind that women lugers are crashing at an unusually high rate on the Torino track, never mind that women already compete in slalom, moguls, freestyle skiing, skeleton, luge, bobsled, speedskating, snowboarding, and all kinds of sports that result in crashes, injuries and the potential for being impaled with the sharp edges of your equipment.

These excuses have been used for years and years and years to keep women out of sports. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now. The IOC is particularly slow to adapt, too — they didn’t allow women’s marathons into the Summer Games until 1984, 17 years after Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to officially enter the Boston Marathon in 1967 — though she never disclosed she was a woman (since the application didn’t ask), and a race official tried to forcibly remove her from the race when she was found out (see the pics in the link for some ugly rage). Switzer finished the race (though she was afraid of being assaulted again by officials), and her uterus didn’t fall out. Neither have the uteruses of the millions of other women who’ve finished marathons or competed in other sports (the Boston Marathon was opened to women in 1972 — with the backing of the same official who’d tried to eject Switzer — twelve years before the Olympics would allow women to run the same distance).

Via Feministing.

The USOC has ruled that skeleton coach Tim Nardiello, who was recently reinstated by an arbitrator after accusations of sexual harassment from several female sliders, will not be going to Turin after all.

The United States Olympic Committee refused yesterday to allow Tim Nardiello to coach the skeleton team at the Turin Olympics. The decision came after a four-week investigation into sexual harassment accusations against him by several female athletes. The U.S.O.C. said it found Nardiello had violated the coaches’ code of ethics and was guilty of “inappropriate interactions.”

The decision was made by the U.S.O.C.’s senior management, led by the chief executive, Jim Scherr. It came one day after an arbitrator in Albany found that Nardiello had not violated the United States Bobsled and Skeleton Federation’s sexual harassment policy. That night, the federation reinstated Nardiello to his job.

Looks like the federation dropped the ball in its arbitration proceedings:

The federation did not conduct an investigation of Nardiello before its arbitration hearing. U.S.O.C. lawyers, however, interviewed 12 skeleton athletes, Nardiello and several other people who said they had witnessed harassing behavior.

“Based on the information gathered during our investigation, it is our belief there has been a pattern of conduct on the part of Mr. Nardiello that simply does not meet the standard of what is acceptable for a coach with the United States Olympic team,” Scherr said in a statement.

Broaching a broader topic, Scherr also took aim at the federation for what he said was poor handling of the accusations, which stretch back to 2002, calling it “unacceptable.” He criticized the federation for initially deciding to ask for Nardiello’s resignation, but only after the Olympics.

The U.S.O.C.’s action yesterday put into sharp focus its relationship with its 38 individual sports federations, known as national governing bodies or N.G.B.’s. Generally, they run the gamut from exemplary to barely functional. The skeleton and bobsled federation’s mounting problems have not escaped the ire of the U.S.O.C.

Glad to see that the USOC, at least, is looking out for the athletes instead of focusing solely on winning. It does appear that the skeleton and bobsled federation has been something of a problem child within the USOC (which has come a long way since the 1994 corruption scandal).

Hat tip Broadsheet.