Revolutionaries: Women's ski jumping

“Revolutionaries” is a feature focusing on women's progress into sports that are usually considered "male". 

Do you know what ski jumping is? If you don't: It's a sport where skiers "go down a take-off ramp, jump and attempt to land as far as possible down the hill below" according to Wikipedia.  It looks like this:

It's a winter sport. Personally I don't find it terribly exciting. But let's ask ourselves a question. Do women do this? It is what I wondered watching the coverage of some events during my winter break. Ski jumping is regularly featured in German media during the winter and much thought is given to the state of the men's team, their chances to win medals, etc. I never heard of women's ski jumping in my life.

But as it turns out, it exists. Today there is a women's FIS (International Ski federation) World Cup, which is the season-long competition featuring multiple events, though much less then for the men. Women also participate in the yearly Nordic World Championships since 2009 and there are a mixed team competitions since 2012. In 2014, it will be an Olympic sport. While there are still rather few women practicing the sport - only natural, since training athletes begins at a young age and the sport is only just developing - and the media coverage is, at least from my own experience, sparse (though it is televised sometimes), this is quite an achievement. 

But it was not an easy path. Women first pushed for the sport to become Olympic in 2006, vying for the Winter Games in Toronto 2010, but the IOC denied their plea, based on the fact that the sport wasn't established enough. Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC stated that: "we do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down". The discussion about the sport is rife with sexist sterotypes and statements, including the idea that this sport is simply to dangerous and not fir for women (you'll see more in the video below)

Fifteen competitive female ski jumpers filed a suit against this, considering the decision discriminatory, but they were denied, since their suit was based on Canadian law which didn't apply to the IOC. There is, apparently, a documentary based on their struggles, called "Fighting Gravity". I haven't checked it out yet, but it looks very interesting. Here's the trailer:

Ski jumping is a sport that takes guts and courage. It can be very dangerous - there are some awful falls. These women who give their all and take that jump are tremendous athletes who devote their life to this sport. They have every right to be part of the Olypics and all other official competitions.

Thankfully, in 2011, the IOC saw the light and allowed women's ski jumping for the next Olympic games, meaning that there are no longer any sports solely practiced by men at the Winter Olympics!!!

Obviously, this sport is still developing and most of its emerging stars are quite young, like 16-year old Sara Takanashi, the Japanese World Cup leader, or 18-year-old Sara Hendrikson, the newly crowned World Campion from the United States. Overall 53 women have gained Wolrd Cup points this season. The US seem to have a slight advantage at the moment - a strong women's movement in sports has pushed women's ski jumping comparatively early while the men are traditionally not very successful in international competition. But investing in women's ski jumping can be interesting for all federations, also considering the mixed events. While at the top of the men's competition, the margins are tight and talent is abundant, there are few female top athletes right now and they can make the crucial difference between a gold and a silver medal.

Sara Takanashi

It's one of the reasons I like mixed competitions so much. Men's and women's results count equally and national federations are forced to invest in both if they want to succeed. So let's hope that they present a chance for women's ski jumping and allow it to develop into a strong, competitive sport during the next decade. It certainly has a lot of amazing women fighting for it.

If you want to learn more: http://www.fisskijumping.com/ - the FIS official website with quite a lot of information on women too. 

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002265/?categoryid=13&cs=1 about the inception of "Fighting Gravity"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_jumping#Women.27s_ski_jumping English Wikipedia is unfortunately rather brief on the subject - the German article is much better...

Heroines: Carolina Morace

“Heroines” is a (future) regular feature about women who made and make outstanding achievements for women's role in sports. 

Carolina Morace: retired Italian football player, one of the best of the last century, ex-coach of the Canada and Italy women’s national football teams and: the only woman to ever coach a men’s professional team. In 1999 she coached Italian third division side Viterbese. She resigned after only two matches (one win, one loss) due to the heavy media pressure, but it’s still a milestone. She has since proven to be a highly competent coach and was especially successful with Canada. Read this article about her appointment and the reaction to it to find out more. Morace is out-spoken and blunt and has a precise understanding of the game. It’s a shame we never had a chance to see what she could actually achieve with a men’s team because too many people were too small minded.

I would call Carolina Morace a heroine. Firstly she was an outstanding football player, one of the true greats of the game: While statistics are incomplete, sources indicate she scored over 550 goals in the Italian league over 20 years. She is also a legend for her national team, scoring 105 goals in her 150 appearances since her debut when she was 14. Let that sink in for a while. 

She also distinguishes herself by her outspoken and assertive nature. She has no qualms about calling out double standards. One of my favourite quotes from her is this one, concerning her personal life: "I'd prefer to be considered a lesbian than a whore. I'm not married. I preferred to concentrate on my career. It's my business whom I go to bed with and I don't have to answer to anybody about it."

It really is unfortunate that she never had a real chance and failed due to sexist criticism before being able to prove herself. It is widely accepted when men coach women's teams or female athletes, but examples of women coaching men are rare in all sports. And therefore Morace is a heroine, because she dared to face a sexist world head on. She never got a real chance, but she dared. She took the first step. Let's hope someday another woman will follow in her footsteps and everyone will respond in a better, more supportive way. 

[Note: This is partially a crosspost from my tumblr which usually features much less serious stuff.]

Sources:  http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/letter-from-rome-morace-takes-on-the-men-1102974.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_Morace
http://www.uefa.com/womenseuro/history/season=1997/goldenplayer/index.html

Mysoginist of the day: Alan Swann

And the award goes to: Alan Swann of the Petersborough Telegraph, a local English newspaper, who tells us:

World of Sport: Sorry ladies, but you are very dull  

Well, we are terribly sorry indeed you are so bored. Unfortunately, these types of headlines show up again and again. Male sports journalists claim that, quite simply, women's sports aren’t as interesting and that this position is, as Mr. Swann puts it "a biological statement rather than a sexist one."

But two things have to be clearly distinguished here. No one tries to argue that there aren't certain differences between men's and women's football or tennis or any other sports. Men and women have different biological limits and possibilities - not always uniquely in favour of men, one should add - and this creates differences in the way they approach a game. Now it's one thing to state that you personally prefer men's tennis over women's tennis - that’s a simple manner of opinion and preference of style, even though it should be noted that there is no actual clear cut stylistic distinction in most cases.  It's a completely different matter to pretend that men's sports are inherently superior to women's sport because of these differences. That indeed is sexist, whatever Mr. Swann, trying to present us his personal preferences as a matter of fact, wants to pretend. 

His argument is that women "aren’t quick enough, and they aren’t strong enough which should be enough to ensure that they aren’t as richly rewarded in terms of prize money or funding." 

This argument is awfully simplistic and reduces professional sport to a simple question of physical strength, when it is really a combination of so many factors like tactics, anticipation, mental strength and technique. it also needs to be considered that superior physical strength of men is at best relative, especially considering athletes come in various shapes even in one sport, and as much a biological reality as a social construct. As long as society tells women they're naturally physically inferior and at the same looks down at them for being to athletic and "unfeminine" we can hardly expect young girls to be encouraged to even develop their physical strength beyond a certain level.

He further argues, citing the example of women's tennis, that this physical difference means the sport is "pretty much unwatchable and no amount of baseline shrieking and grunting can disguise the fact that the rallies are often interminable exchanges of powderpuff hitting"

Once again, personal opinion is confounded with fact. Apart from the obvious exaggerations, what's troubling is the clear assumption that what he considers the "male" type of tennis, i.e. the antithesis of what he describes here, is inherently superior. It's actually a question of taste. Men's physical strength often leads to serve dominated games, where you rarely see rallies or breaks of serve and can basically fast forward to a tie-breaker. This of course is a similarly gross simplification, but the point is - there are types of typically male tennis you can find just as boring, precisely because of the superior physical strength. 

What Swann's article leads up to is the unfortunately not uncommon demand to abolish equal prize money because as he says "equal pay for less demanding work is one of sport’s great scandals"

The equal prize money debate is a complex one, but in my opinion it boils down to these things: Men and women are equal. And prize money rewards winning and nothing else. It isn't paid by hour or by effort or by the amount of winners hit. Men and women win tennis matches. They should get the same money for it. End of story.

Swann is a prime example of latent sexism in sports. He presents his opinion that men's sport is superior to women's as some type of natural fact and basically wants to turn back time and take back all progress made in terms of equality. Perhaps most telling is the way he preemptively addresses accusations of sexism: "Of course I’m certain to be accused of blatant sexism by the hard-of-thinking and the easily-outraged, but the viewing figures and live attendance totals will back my opinion up."

He disqualifies everyone who doesn't agree with him - a classic strategy if you don't have any pertinent arguments - and claims back-up of by viewing figures in such when in fact they result precisely for under-exposure and devaluation of women's sports in media such as his. 

I always wonder of this type of article - an obvious opinion piece, populist and underwritten - are worth getting upset about. But in the end I think they are. Because they contribute to a number of issues. They engrain stereotypes into society and consequentially discourage potential audiences form discovering women's sports, sponsors form investing and young girls fro participating. So articles like this one are part of the problem and as such it's important they're addressed.