This spring we received a lot of feedback from our readers after USSA announced that it was only going to fund 5 men on this year's US Cross-Country Ski Team. No women, no development team.
Many of our readers were surprised at this strategy, especially when contrasted with the Canadian team's page-long list of athletes and coaches for 2005-2006 (Canada's National Ski Teams Announced). Many wondered why, and why now?
An example of comments we received:
Did I read your article right that [the US Ski Team] is composed of 5 men and no women? Can you write another article explaining how that decision came about? How will this affect the morale of US Women skiers, and have any women skiers written in or showed concern for this inequity?
We have been intending to address these concerns in a follow-up article. But (try as we might) we are not full-time journalists, and we simply have not had the time to do the issue justice.
We did, however, touch on this issue many times through-out our April discussion of <The Current State of US Skiing.
Anchorage Daily News Article
For an in-depth look at this issue, we highly recommend this article that appeared in the July 1 issue of the Anchorage Daily News:
U.S. Nordic Ski Team: Alaskans are conspiciously absent in '05
STILL HOPE: Team that will go to Olympics in February isn't set yet.
By KEVIN KLOTT, Anchorage Daily News
Published: July 1, 2005The first Olympic ski race in Italy is just nine months away,
and so far no Alaskan is on the U.S. Nordic Ski Team.U.S. Nordic director Luke Bodensteiner recently announced
this year's five-skier nordic roster. No Alaskans or women
were included.You can read the full story online at:
