I don’t normally pay much attention to the Winter Olympics, but I have been pointed at an interesting story about the ski jump event (thanks Daniel). This year’s event will doubtless be very competitive, but the record holder on the Whistler Park hill, where the competition takes place, will not be there. She is barred from competing because of her gender.
Ski jumping, it turns out, is one of those sports where the physical advantages of men don’t mean much. Weight apparently has an effect on your speed down the hill, but they can handicap contestants by changing the starting point. The IOC says that it can’t have a women’s event in the Olympics because there are not enough good women ski jumpers to make a reasonable contest. Nevertheless 2009 saw the first women’s world championships, which Van won. She took her case for an Olympic place to court in Canada, but lost.
It seems to me that this is an excellent opportunity to test out Kristin Worley’s ideas for gender-neutral competition. You could put men and women ski jumpers in the same competition and just handicap them by weight. But the IOC is having none of it. Their devotion to gender-separated sport is absolute. After all, what would happen if you let women into men’s sports and a woman won?
Grrrr. That sucks!
Women have won in Men’s Sports. Kelly Kulick just won on the US Pro Bowling tour in a men’s event. One of their majors none the less. Olympics are playing BS. Logic doesn’t apply to the Olympics, so I won’t be watching much of them (esepcially this weekend because of Katuscon).
But that’s ridiculous. Women compete directly against men in equestrian sports and three-day eventing is a very dangerous sport. Women compete against men in yachting (and have to tolerate the snide remarks from old farts who can’t cope with a slip of a girl outstripping their achievments). But there have been many ways for women to level the playing ground in equestrian pursuits ever since the leaping head and breakaway stirrup were invented in sidesaddle – why do I get the feeling that the Winter IOC would prefer if women confined themselves to making pretty pictures on ice and not muddling their ideas of “feminity”?
The spirit (ptooey!) of Avery Brundage lives on.
In the Summer games in the rifle shooting events men and women competed together until the day when a US woman won a Silver metal. Ever since there have been separate men and women’s events. I’d have to go digging to find the date and person — but think it was Murdock in Montreal.
Back with more facts….
Shooting events at the Olympics were “open” until 1984. Where open ment that both women and men competed. The separate Women’s events were established in 1984.
The woman I remembered was Margaret Thompson Murdock who won a silver in the 50m three-position rifle event at the 1976 Olympics. My Dad remembers that she recieved the silver after a tie-breaking procedure for the gold. This was the first metal won by a woman in the olympics. Aoccring to Wikipedia Zhan Shan also won gold in an open skeet event in 1992 Olympics (but they admit the article is incomplete).
see some history here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/olympics/longterm/shooting/shthist.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_at_the_Summer_Olympics
So it was because Margaret Thompson Murdock did so well that they hived off the women into a separate event…? Oh dear (but depressingly plausible…)
Kelly Kulick is an amazing bowler. Congrats to Kelly for winning the PBA Tournament of Champions. I can’t wait to see what’s next for her!