Anchorage Daily News

Almost a decade into the 21st century and more than 35 years after Title IX became law, sports remains an unfair world for the fairer sex.

On Friday, a Canadian court offered no more than a moral victory for women's ski jumpers who will remain on the ground for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

A group of female jumpers asked the British Columbia Supreme Court for a declaration ordering either the addition of women's ski jumping or the cancellation of the men's ski jumping events. The jumpers claimed the International Olympic Committee's decision to deny Olympic status to women's ski jumping violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In its ruling, the court said the IOC is guilty of discrimination -- but that it doesn't have the authority to force the IOC to add or cancel events at the Vancouver Games.

This is the same IOC that wouldn't let women run the marathon -- which men raced at the inaugural 1896 Games -- until 1984. The same IOC that wouldn't let women compete in biathlon -- which became a sport for men in 1960 -- until 1992. The same IOC that put the men's hammer throw in the 1900 Olympics and then let a full century pass before adding the women's hammer throw.

This is the same IOC that delights in putting women in bikinis for beach volleyball, in sending women onto mats with hoops and ribbons for rhythmic gymnastics, in dolling up women with waterproof makeup for synchronized swimming.

The message being sent is plain: Leave the tough, gritty stuff for the men. Put the women in pretty, delicate sports.

It's a message seen everywhere, not just at the Olympics. Look at every sport and you're likely to find curious differences among the genders. In international cross-country skiing, the men's longest race is 50 kilometers while the women's is 30 kilometers. In tennis, the men play five sets but the women only go three. In figure skating, the long program lasts 4 1/2 minute for the men but 4 minutes for the women. In track and field, women for years were banned from the pole vault.

It's one thing to recognize genuine physiological differences between men and women and adjust the equipment accordingly -- a smaller basketball for women, taller hurdles for men. It's beyond archaic to think women don't have the fortitude or skills to play the same sports as men or the endurance to play as long as men.

Which brings us back to women's ski jumping, the only sport in the Olympics that does not offer an event for women.

In the early 1990s, the IOC ruled that any additions to the Olympic program must include women's events. That's great for aerial skiers -- whose sport debuted in 1994 with both men and women competing -- but meaningless for ski jumpers. Men have been ski jumping at the Olympics since the first Winter Games in 1924.

The IOC defends its decision to ban women ski jumpers by saying their sport is too young and competed in too few countries.

That attitude has plagued women forever and kept them on the sidelines for almost as long.

It's a classic catch-22. A sport must be well established to gain admittance to the Olympics (or the NCAA, or whatever). Yet women were denied athletic opportunities for so long that almost all women's sports are young when compared to men's. And not every country has a law like this country's Title IX, which forced open doors long bolted shut, so going global isn't easy.

A talented young athlete with no Olympic, college or professional goal to chase is likely to find another sport. A lot of women are likely to quit ski jumping given the IOC's refusal to let them compete in Vancouver. A lot of little girls are likely to not even give it a try.

"It's a very big deterrent," said Mike Jokela, an Anchorage man who is a member of the national sub-committee for ski jumping.

Anchorage has a small ski jumping community that currently includes no girls or women, Jokela said. He thinks that would change if they saw women jump in the Olympics or if the American women brought home medals. When Anchorage's Alan Alborn set new standards for men's ski jumping in the United States several years ago, "his success did a lot not only for Anchorage ski jumping but all over the U.S.," Jokela said.

The kicker to all this is that by denying women the chance to ski jump in February in Canada, the IOC is barring the jumper who owns the record for the farthest jump on Whistler Olympic Park's K95 normal hill.

Lindsey Van, a world champion for the U.S. women's team, set the record of 105.5 meters in a January 2008 competition. That's half a meter farther than the men's record on the same hill.

In the 1988 Winter Olympics, England's Eddie the Eagle became a lovable joke when he bumbled through two ski jumping competitions to finish last in both events. The IOC looks just as inept for turning Vancouver into a no-fly zone for women.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

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