Not in 2010

In recent years the International Olympic Committee has been making a push for gender equity in the sports in their program. Their ultimate goal, it appeared, was to make comparable male and female events for virtually all sports. (Even I’m realistic. There’s no way we’ll be seeing male synchronized swimming anytime soon.)

Yesterday the IOC made their decisions about what event to add to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. They had seven events to choose from and only added one: skicross.

Anyone that saw this past February’s Olympics from Torino saw the introduction of an exciting new snowboarding event, snowboard cross. It’s a high speed event with lot of action that seemed to capture a lot of people’s interest and earned high television ratings here in the United States. Skicross is much the same event except on skis instead of on snowboards.

What didn’t get approval is what surprised me. The IOC has the chance to build on their pledge of gender equity by adding women’s ski jumping, but they passed. A representative of the committee said that the sport of women’s ski jumping is still too early in its development and would be considered again for the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in either PyeongChang, South Korea, Salzburg, Austria, or Sochi, Russia.

In addition to passing on women’s ski jumping the IOC also passed on a few mixed events where men and women would compete on the same teams in biathlon and curling. (Also rejected were team events in Alpine skiing, luge, skeleton, and bobsleigh.)

It almost seems hollow to me for the International Olympic Committee to want to achieve gender equity but then does not add the sports to its program that would help get them there. Would the addition of a sport to the Olympic program help it move its development along in leaps and bounds? And why not include more events where men and women can compete together?

If the IOC wants gender equity, maybe they should be making the necessary moves to achieve it.