THE CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER — Katie Willis believes her dream of competing at the 2010 Olympics has moved closer to reality now that the federal government has said it will try to convince the International Olympic Committee to include women’s ski jumping at the Vancouver Games.
“It means everything,” Willis said Tuesday. “This means a huge chance at getting to the Olympics that we never thought.
“Some people were giving up. This brings so much hope to us.”
But the head of the Canadian Olympic Committee cautioned women ski jumpers not to get their hopes too high.
“I think it will be very difficult to have this decision changed,” said Chris Rudge, the COC’s chief executive officer.
The federal government’s decision to raise the issue with the IOC is part of a settlement reached after Jan Willis, Katie’s mother, filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Willis and other female ski jumpers said being denied the chance to compete at the Olympics was discriminatory.
They also argued Canadian taxpayers’ money was used to build facilities for the 2010 Games and it’s against federal and provincial law to spend government money on facilities that discriminate.
“The Government supports the inclusion and equality of women in sport, and we are committed to ensuring our policy on women and sport continues to be effective in increasing the involvement of women in the Canadian sport system,” Helena Guergis, secretary of state for sport, said in a release.
Having the federal government take up the fight shows how important the issue of gender equality is to Canadians, said a government spokesman.
“Having a government intervene, and particularly a hosting government, shows the significance of our position on this on a matter of equality and a matter of pursing equality,” Jeffrey Kroeker, Guergis’s communications director, said in an interview from Ottawa.
“Having a government who is hosting the Games side with, and take the position, that it supports the equality of these young ladies, then hopefully that will bring a new dimension to this whole debate.”
Rudge said the COC supports the inclusion of women’s ski jumping but the IOC was following its own protocol when it voted not to add the sport to the Vancouver schedule.
“The reality is, the IOC made the decision based upon principles that are established for new disciplines,” he said.
“While we may be inclined to want to approach them again, and the COC would probably be helpful in this area, I wouldn’t hold out a great deal of hope it would have an impact on the IOC decision.”
The IOC voted in 2006 not to allow women’s ski jumping into the 2010 Games, saying the sport has not yet developed enough and that it didn’t meet basic criteria for inclusion.
In order to be considered for inclusion in an Olympic Games, a sport must have held at least two world championships. The first women’s ski jumping world championships will be held next year in Liberec, Czech Republic.
The Olympic charter also won’t allow new sports to be added within four years of a Games.
Supporters of women’s ski jumpers argue there are 135 women ski jumpers in 16 countries. This compares to other sports already in the Games like snowboard cross, which has 34 women from 10 countries, skier cross, which has 30 women from 11 nations, and bobsled, which has 26 women from 13 nations.
They also argue that women’s marathon was added to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles after a single world championship in 1983.
A spokesman for the Vancouver Olympic Games Organizing Committee said there is room to accommodate women’s ski jumping in Vancouver.
“We’re aware of the announcement of the settlement and are reviewing it,” Cathy Priestner Allinger, VANOC’s vice-president of sport, said in a release. “If we are asked to participate in discussions with respect to the 2010 Olympic sport program, we will do so.”
Katie Willis said it will be difficult for the IOC to ignore pressure from the federal government.
“It’s not just athletes and parents any more,” she said in an interview from Calgary. “Now it’s the federal government.
“I think (the IOC) will listen because they will have to. If they keep on rejecting us from the Olympics, they will get some bad press and nothing good can become of it. I think they will have to listen.”