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Followup on the Women’s Ski Jumping Mess

zuzu

Remember how we discovered last year during the Olympics the real reason why there’s no Olympic women’s ski jump? That the IOC and the Ski Federation think that women jumpers’ girlie bits are going to get jostled right out of their bodies?

Well, Vanessa at Feministing has a followup: the athletes have mobilized for action in advance of the 2010 Vancouver Games:

They have filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission on the basis that not allowing them to jump is gender discrimination, which should be prohibited at a venue that’s being constructed with millions of Canadian money. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) are now saying the reason is that there aren’t enough pro female ski jumpers to compete in the games, but female ski jumpers say it’s a crock.

While there are predictions that the complaint won’t amount to much considering the fact that the IOC had already made its decision, I have hopes; after all, it is Canada.

Canada has particular reasons for wanting to see women’s ski jumping allowed into their home games:

Women’s ski jumping is one of only two events in the Winter Olympics that do not include women – the other is Nordic combined, which includes ski jumping and cross-country skiing – and the Canadians, along with the Americans who live and train in Park City, are particularly good at it. Seven of the top 18 female ski jumpers in the world rankings hail from the two nations, including Park City’s Lindsay Van, Jessica Jerome, Alissa Johnson and Abby Hughes.

“If they get away with this, it diminishes the whole idea about the Olympic Games and fairness and equality,” Johnson has said.

Yet the IOC ruled last year that women’s ski jumping would have to wait until the 2014 Winter Games because not enough women or nations compete in it, and the organizing committee in Vancouver is going ahead with its plans not to include the sport.

Come on, people. You added CURLING. A sport that uses BROOMS.

And the jumpers argue that they have more international competitors than does the skicross event, newly added to the lineup. And even the International Ski Federation is relenting, adding women’s individual ski jumping to its World Championships for 2009.

Time to get with the times, IOC. Though any organization that calls its head “Excellency” has a few issues.

Canadians — what do you think of the potential for success of this complaint?

34 thoughts on Followup on the Women’s Ski Jumping Mess

  1. Ahem. Curling is the Canadian National Pastime. More people probably curl than actually play hockey — hockey is quite physically demanding, but curling is a sport of millimetres.

    As to whether I think the complaint will have any effect, I’m not really sure. I don’t see what the CHRC can do about the IOC ruling, other than to tell them to get stuffed, which probably won’t do much. I do agree the treatment is discriminatory, and I can’t see how the CHRC could possibly find against the complainants, even in this political climate (Stephen Harper, yuck!).

  2. And more people here play soccer than hockey, but I’m already digressing…

    I don’t see what the CHRC can do about the IOC ruling, other than to tell them to get stuffed, which probably won’t do much.

    I agree with Interrobang. I think they’ll find in favour of the complainants, but it’ll be non-binding–the CHRC has no jurisdiction over the IOC. Why these ski jumpers filed their complaint with the CHRC and not, say, the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights (whose decision unfortunately also would be, I believe, non-binding–but at least here they’d have a body with international stature making the ruling) is beyond me.

    Furthermore, at the pace the CHRC operates sometimes, it could be 2010 before they even make their decision (okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) And then the IOC–which is definitely not the most progressive organization (whither thou, Women’s Boxing and Women’s Weightlifting?)–on top of that? As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think women’s ski jumping has a chance of making it into the Whistler/Vancouver games.

  4. Hey, don’t knock curling. Hibbing, Minnesota won the bronze in men’s curling at Turino in ’06. (Yes, Hibbing, Minnesota–every guy on the team was from Hibbing, and we’re justifiably proud of ’em).

    Can’t someone get the SLOC reorganized? They could just bribe olympic officials–no fuss, no muss. Hey, it’s how things worked in Salt Lake City.

  5. Curling has teams in at least 14 nations and Canadian teams spent alot of time making sure that happened before it became an Olympic sport. I have no idea how many nations have women’s ski jumping or Nordic combined but if they don’t have enough to run a competitive round robin then they are out of luck. The rule may seem arbitrary but the bar is actually quite low.
    For the World Cup the teams have to be at a certain competitive level, for the Olympics they just have to be from different countries and within the guidelines of their governing sport. If they can round up a dozen teams from different countries and with international students that isn’t as hard as it sounds then they need to petition their sports associations to recognize them. With that in place the IOC is more likely to relent though not for 2010.

    The other problem is that as a women’s version of a medal event the new track would have to be a medal event. The IOC has been under pressure to restrict the total number of medal events as the whole Olympics has become increasingly ungainly. Skicross is a trial event and as such does not medal perssay. Curling went through that stage and could prove that it could consistently provide sufficient teams and interest.

    Finally venue use, yes, the ski jump venue can easily add a women’s track for both the jump and Nordic but the cross-country venue is a packed field.

    Don’t diss curling to a Canadian. Even if they don’t play it or understand it they will defend it. It is a truly Canadian sport in that age, weight and gender are not deciding factors in how good you are at playing. It is a team sport. The winners pay for beer afterwards.

  6. Back in the 60s, when I was in school, for a while gym teachers were telling us that jumping jacks would do the same. As if the uterus is just floating loose in the abdomen, like bubbles in a lava lamp.

  8. Hee hee, zuzu, consider this- every commenter here can still be an Olympic athlete if they take up curling, how many sports can say that?

  9. That’s rather an argument against the inclusion of curling as part of an elite-level competition, don’t you think?

  10. Actually, no. If elite sport is about skill then a sport where you are only judged based on that skill and not on inherited and non-transferable qualities is a better judge of your elite status based on the sport and not who mommy and daddy are. Curling has had world champions who have been over-weight seniors and working mothers with cancer. They and their teams have been able to compete because they had the skills necessary to excel.

  11. And technically the Olympics are not an elite level competition, they are an international fellowship based on sport. The fact that nations play politics with their sporting clubs is a side effect.

  13. The CHRC could not entertain a complaint against the IOC. The Canadian Human Rights Act applies only to goverment actions and actors under the mandate of the federal goverment which the IOC definately is not. The complainants could only lodge a complaint against the federal goverment for providing funds to the event. Even then it is doubtful that will fly (no pun intended) as the case law is clear that merely providing money to something isn’t sufficient to bring it under the control of goverment (universities in Canada, for example, get a large portion of their money from the federal governement but they are not considered part of or under the control of the federal goverment and thus not within the scope of the CHRA). There has to be some control by the goverment in order to bring it under the mandate of the CHRA.

    What the ski jumpers need do is ensure that there are sufficient numbers of women ski jumping across the world who will be recognized by their respective national olympic bodies. This is what happened with women’s hockey. Let’s face it, it is hardly a competative sport across the world with Canada and the US dominating (though what happened to the US team at the last Olympics is good for the sport, I believe, especially since our Canadian team won). Nevertheless, other countries are prepared to send teams so it is in the Olympics. These women may just be jumping the gun.

    And I too like curling and I will always have a special place in my heart for Sandra Schmirler (the curler) who died of cancer a couple of years after winning the Olympic gold medal.

  14. I would never accuse someone of hating curling, it is like faith or physics and you either get it or you don’t 😉

  17. Ugh. The IOC is such a patriarchal organization and so resistant to change. (Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the huckster who founded the modern Games, once said something like, “The only place for a woman here is placing a garland on the (male) winner’s head.”) And, it’s so sad, for female athletes and audiences/spectators and fans of women’s sports overall, because the Olympics is one of the few venus for seeing female athleticism. The events that have opened up to female competitors in recent years don’t make up for the fact that most events are male only, that sex testing is used (at all) and just for those in women’s events, that these sorts of justifications are used, and that there is no will to change. It’s a conundrum: You know the institution will never change, but there aren’t other opportunities to go to.

    One more thing, which makes this so ironic: Anyone who watched the Summer Games a couple of summers ago will remember the spotlighting of women’s beach volleyball (at the expense of many other women’s sports, especially team sports and sports that don’t fit with gender stereotypes) and how scantily clad those athletes were. (Male players wore long shorts, while the female players wore skimpy bikinis.) I learned later that the international federation overseeing the sport MANDATES that the bikini bottoms are NO MORE than a certain number of inches! And, I don’t think they try to justify this (e.g., saying this would positively contribute to their athleticism); they say flat out that they want to use sex appeal to appease sponsors and draw more audiences. So, to be a female athletes means you have to submit to having your body sexually objectified. Ugh.

  21. Are there any events in the Summer Olympics that don’t include women?

    Lisa, there isn’t women’s boxing or women’s weightlifting in the summer games.

  23. Lisa, there isn’t women’s boxing or women’s weightlifting in the summer games.

    Women’s weightlifting was added in the 2000 Sydney games.

  24. Not a chance anything effective will happen — they’re not going to suddenly dump the Games. I don’t think they can just schedule the ski jumping in without the IOC’s permission.

    About how many people compete:

    Women’s ski jumpers argue that they have more worldwide competitors than the skicross event that the IOC has added for the Vancouver Games – women from 13 nations will compete internationally this season – and that a decision by the International Ski Federation to add individual women’s ski jumping for the 2009 World Championships in the Czech Republic is proof of the sport’s maturity.

  25. I think Norbiz covered all the gender-restricted Olympic sports, except the baseball/softball divide. Oh, and rhythmic gymnastics is only for girls as well. Just like ski jumping is too hard on women’s bodies, men’s bodies are unsuited for ribbon twirling.

    The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if the IOC just doesn’t want to add another sport that Americans will dominate.

  27. except the baseball/softball divide.

    I think they’re getting rid of baseball and softball for the next Summer Olympics. Which actually really sucks for the Caribbean and Latin American countries that do very well there.

  28. Baseball and softball are in for Beijing, out for London, I believe. The IOC’s argument was, I think, that any sport that couldn’t send its best players shouldn’t be in–so baseball was voted out and softball, which does send its best, was unfairly lumped in with baseball (since why build a diamond for a women’s-only sport? It’d be like building a giant ski jump only for men! Oh wait….) I don’t think they’ll be back until MLB reaches some kind of agreement with the IOC.

    And of course the US would dominate men’s rhythmic gymnastics, Nomie. Our free-market ribbon twirling is far beyond anything the Reds could come up with. 🙂

  31. Since the Olympics are going to be held in China, I don’t think they give a shit about human rights.

    Technicaly, they could go to court and force the IOC to comply. But that could take years.

    The only thing I like about curling are the small skirts.

  32. I believe that in the interest of balancing out the Summer and Winter Games, Beach volley ball should move to the Winter Games as most Beach volleyball occurs in the Southern Summer/Northern Winter. This way the athletes are at their peak performance and with outside venues will truly be able to prove their elite status.
    The games are always in flux and it is important to differentiate between the trial sports that the host country gets to okay and the medal sports that actually count in the totals.

  33. I learned later that the international federation overseeing the sport MANDATES that the bikini bottoms are NO MORE than a certain number of inches!

    kinda like how the Olympic committee mandated that female figure skaters wear skirts after *oh fuck, her name escapes me but I think it was ’88* wore a unitard and only rescinded that rule last year.

  34. I thought they had women’s ski jump, but I guess it’s a different effect on the uterus when you just go straight up, flip around and come down?

    Idiots.

    Also, I don’t know what they call the straight-up-flippy thing but it seemed a hell of a lot more dangerous than just a ski jump. One of the women snapped her leg when she hit the ground, you could /hear/ it go, and a few others came down really hard and ugly as well.

    My favorite was the snowboard pipe thingie. It’s not quite SSX Tricky but they’re getting there.

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