The following letter from IOC President Jacques Rogge was recently received by the 14 elite women ski jumpers fighting for inclusion in the 2010 Olympic Games.
Dear Ladies,
Thank you for your letter. As you know, I admire your passion for your sport and your ability as athletes. This is underlined by the tenacious way in which you have campaigned for inclusion in the Vancouver Games. However, for a number of clear reasons, we confirm our decision that women’s ski jumping will not be part of the Olympic programme in February 2010.
We are both in agreement that the inclusion of women’s boxing in the London 2012 Olympic Games is a great decision for the athletes involved and for the Olympic Movement as a whole. The inclusion of women’s boxing highlights the fact that the IOC is working hard to reach gender parity in winter and summer Games.
It also underlines that the reason why we took the decision not to include women’s ski jumping was made strictly on a technical basis and absolutely not on gender grounds and was part of a process employed across all sports in the programme. The view of the Olympic Programme Commission, which considered the women’s ski jumping application, was that the event was not ready.
As you point out in your letter, women’s ski jumping is growing and we are also trying to do our bit by including women’s ski jumping in the inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games. Hopefully, together we can contribute to bringing more participants into the sport.
As we’ve said since we made our decision in 2006, we remain open to considering women’s ski jumping for inclusion in future Olympic Winter Games and I am sure that your event will be able to make a very strong case the next time the FIS proposes it.
Lastly, I note that you highlight the comments of the judge in making her judgement against the inclusion of women’s ski jumping in the next edition of the Winter Games. You will note that she also highlighted that the “IOC in recent years has supported the inclusion of women in the Olympics and in amateur sports and implemented a wide range of initiatives to increase women’s involvement in leadership and administration within the Olympic movement and the wider sporting community." You have my assurance that this progress will continue.
Yours sincerely,
Jacques Rogge
4 comments
Jamey Holstein
August 25, 2009 at 8:42 pm
“…the decision not to include women’s ski jumping was made strictly on a technical basis and absolutely not on gender grounds and was part of a process employed across all sports in the programme.”
Is there a “Women’s Beach Volley Ball” venue at the summer games and “Mens Beach Volley Ball” venue? Is there a seperate “Women’s Track” venue apart from the “Men’s Track” vneue? Come on, stop the nonsense, it absolutley is a gender issue and as it relates to participation. Perhpas “skier-X” has more participants world wide and is not just an outlet for washed up alpine racers who could not make their respective national teams in 2010 – NOT!
Fine, so we are talking about “Ski Jumping” and not “Womens” Ski Jumping? Then USSA/USST should get some ‘nads and enter some of these women in the “mens” events as a show of support!
I call bullshit.
We got what we asked for as far as the organiztion that speaks and represents the nordic sports in this country. Like Tommy said “…were not gonna take it….”
Tim Kelley
August 27, 2009 at 11:51 am
Hey Jamey – So the IOC and Rogge say that skier cross was ready for the Olympics, but women’s jumping is not. What is kinda funny is to do a Google search for “skier cross”. The top search result is “skiercross.org”. If you go to that site – you find a simple web page that says: “Full Web Site Coming Soon”. And below that the word “the” is spelled wrong. Skier cross many be ready for the Olympics (in Rogge’s opinion), but it does not appear the sport is quite ready for the web!
Actually – if the Wikipedia article about the “relatively new type of skiing competition” skicross is correct, then ski cross has discriminatory traits to it also. The article says that 32 men, but only 16 women, are selected after the time trial for the head to head heats.
It’s funny that guys like you and I get passionate about discrimination issues against women skiers. But at the same time we are silent when it comes to men not being allowed to put on matching designer swimsuits and waterproof makeup and compete in summer Olympics synchronized swimming events. 😉
Jamey Holstein
August 27, 2009 at 7:05 pm
TK
who woould want to see u or i in a designer swim suits and waterproof makeup anyway?
What a fantastic opportunity for the US to have a real “jump” on the rest of the world and bring huge attention to an exciting areana sport that gets so little attention in the U.S. Get your heads out of your collective USSA-butts and support the “best in the world” and let ’em jump!
Enter the woman in the men’s events, I say…let them jump, let them JUMP, let THEM JUMP, LET THEM JUMP!
Tim Kelley
August 28, 2009 at 9:47 am
Jamey, For the women jumpers to get into the 2010 Olympics – there is an easy, time honored and effective way to get the IOC to say ‘yes’. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it would probably cost 50 to 100 million dollars.
Recent news states that the IOC is helping to bail out VANOC because they are 37+ million in the red. They wanted to get 10-11 major sponsors, but they only got 9 sponsors to pony up a little over 900 million. So that’s an average of 100 million per sponsor.
VANOC and the IOC want/need 2 more major sponsors so there is no budget shortfall debt that Canadians will have to pay off over decades, like with the ’76 Olympics. So if a major sponsor came along and said: “We’ll be a major sponsor of the Winter Olympics if you let the girls jump” … then women’s jumping would be part of the Olympics in a heartbeat. That’s how the IOC works.