Women Jumpers Get Olympic Cold Shoulder
The International Olympic Committee approved the addition of a new freestyle ski event for the 2010 Winter Olympics on Tuesday, but rejected the inclusion of women's ski jumping and several other disciplines.
Skicross, a rough-and-tumble event similar to snowboardcross, was accepted by the International Olympic Committee executive board on the opening day of its two-day meeting in Kuwait.
Ski jumping and Nordic combined are the only competitions in the Winter Olympics in which women don't participate. While the IOC is eager to have gender equity in all sports, officials said women's jumping hasn't yet been fully established, noting that the first world championships in the event aren't scheduled until 2009.
"It's still not ready," IOC vice president Gunilla Lindberg said. "In our analysis, there are not enough athletes and not enough countries. They have to work with the international ski federation and Nordic combined to be ready for 2014."
Canada's women ski jumpers sent a letter to Vancouver organizers on Nov. 20, urging them to "embrace this opportunity to remove the final barrier to equal participation by women at the Vancouver Olympics."
American women jumpers are among the best in the world, and have also been pushing for Olympic inclusion for years.
"It hurts me to think that someday I won't have a medal I deserved, an Olympic run I deserved, or be in a world championship, just because I'm a woman," ski jumper Alissa Johnson told CBSNews.com's Christine Lagorio in February. Johnson traveled to the Torino Olympics this year to watch her younger brother, Anders, compete in the sport, which doesn't allow women in its Olympic competition.
The Kuwait meeting was the last chance for new events to secure a spot on the Vancouver sports program. The next opportunity will be for the 2014 Games.
Meet America's ski jumping women, in photos
Read about the women's fight for Olympic equality
Watch the jumpers in actionSkicross, the newly admitted event, involves groups of skiers racing each other to the bottom of a course with jumps, rollers, banks and other man-made and natural terrain features. The competition is part of the International Ski Federation's World Cup freestyle circuit, which also includes the Olympic events of aerials and moguls.
Snowboardcross debuted at the Winter Games in Turin 10 months ago and drew big crowds and good ratings.
Among the events turned down were women's ski jumping, a team event in Alpine skiing, individual curling and team luge.
Also Tuesday, the IOC agreed to partially lift a freeze in payments to the International Amateur Boxing Association. The board released $300,000 and said the funds should be used by national boxing federations to buy video systems for improving judging.
The IOC froze around $1 million in payments to the federation after the 2004 Athens Games, citing concerns over scoring and the selection of judges.
A breakthrough came last month when longtime AIBF president Anwar Chowdhry of Pakistan was defeated in a re-election bid by Taiwan's Ching-Kuo Wu at the association's congress in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Critics had accused the 84-year-old Chowdhry, who led the federation for 20 years, of corruption and mismanagement.
Tuesday's meeting began with a minute of silence for Swiss IOC member Marc Hodler, who died Oct. 17 at age 87. Hodler was the man who broke open the Salt Lake City scandal with allegations of bribery in the Olympic host city bidding process.
Beijing's preparations for the 2008 Olympics and the soaring construction costs for the 2012 London Games will be reviewed Wednesday.