Van fights for women's ski jumping

The galling thing to Park City ski jumper Lindsey Van isn't just that she won't be in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

It's who will be.

Sliders, skiers and shredders of all sorts — bobsled, skeleton, luge, snowboard. Even shooters. Biathlon has been around for decades.

And don't forget the butt of every winter sports joke ever invented: curling.

But women's ski jumping?

As it currently stands, not gonna happen.

Which is where patience ends and Van begins. She's pushing to get her sport into the Games. Now. She's not waiting until the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, either.

"No way," she said, Wednesday. "That's too far away for me. I'll be too old."

Youth. Always in a hurry. Last week, Van increased the pressure by becoming her sport's first world champ in Liberec, Czech Republic. At 24, she is just the second American to win a World Championship ski jumping medal. Last time that happened was in 1924, when Anders Haugen took a bronze in the combined World Championships and Olympics.

After that, it was a long wait. The sport was dominated by Europeans, who decided long ago it was their inalienable right to fly.

Men, of course, have been jumping since the mid-1800s. The first World Championships were in 1936. But women have been denied. Though they have been competing for a decade, their first championships were held last week.

Van was tied for fourth after the first jump, but on the second she flat-out took flight. Five seconds after liftoff, she had soared almost 320 feet to win easily.

Nobody else went farther than 307 feet.

She had slipped the surly bonds of Earth.

The other 15,000 jumps she has made, starting as a grade-schooler in Park City, were just warm-ups. Soon she had won 13 national jumping championships, was attending the University of Utah and working her way to the Olympics.

All was well, except that one little problem: She wanted the Olympics, but the Olympics didn't want her — even though she holds the hill record for both men and women at Whistler Olympic Park.

The argument is always the same. Officials insist the interest and talent isn't there for women's ski jumping, even though it apparently is for men. IOC media relations manager Emmanuelle Moreau told The Canadian Press last year, "Any reference to the fact that this is a matter about gender equality is totally inappropriate and misleading."

That's probably true, even though ski jumping is the only winter Olympic sport that doesn't include both genders. Nobody in their right mind — especially the image-conscious Olympics — would want that headache.