Women left out in cold

The International Olympic Committee would have you believe that women's ski jumping hasn't matured enough as a sport in order to be included in the 2010 Games in Vancouver. That is what officials said last week in explaining why they rejected attempts to add it for the first time.

Frankly, it's a threadbare assertion. This season alone, female jumpers for 14 nations are expected to compete in 20 events worldwide, according to a letter from the Canadian team, obtained by the Associated Press. Anyone who has been close to Park City in recent months knows how many American women athletes take the sport seriously and are anxious for a turn in the Olympics.

Unfortunately for them, the IOC now won't consider adding the event until at least the 2014 Games, and that will be too late. For an athlete, there are only so many prime years in which to train and compete. This generation's group of pioneer women — including Utahns such as Jessica Jerome and Lindsay Van — may have to give way to a new generation before anyone competes for a gold medal on the world's largest stage.

That's a shame.

In some ways, it was fitting that the IOC made this decision in Kuwait, a nation that has hardly been at the forefront of women's rights. Ski jumping and Nordic combined are the only two sports in which women are still excluded at the Olympics.

If, as the IOC says, women's ski jumping hasn't progressed enough for inclusion, that is due in large measure to officials at the IOC and the International Ski Federation, who have used false and ridiculous arguments against it through the years. These tended to focus on the supposedly delicate nature of the female anatomy and included worries that jumping and landing would harm reproductive organs.

Those arguments continued despite the inclusion of women's ice hockey, bobsledding and other rough sports. They now have mostly disappeared as women keep jumping in increasing numbers, which is why the ski federation has relented and agreed to include women's ski jumping in the 2009 World Championships in the Czech Republic. But the Olympics remains an elusive goal.

Instead of women jumpers, the IOC voted to include skicross, an event in which groups of skiers compete to the bottom of a course that contains a series of man-made and natural barriers. It's a sport the IOC believes will become popular with young audiences craving speed and action. However, an AP report said only 16 women will compete in it in 2010.

In any event, it is not a sport with the history and tradition of ski jumping.

No doubt, the day of women jumpers is coming. The momentum, which includes the help of former Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini in forming Women's Ski Jumping USA, keeps mounting.

But glaciers move faster than this.