Our loss–Well, maybe when the Olympics move to Russia? 
Curling is much more fun. Thats the one where they have that thingy where some guys use a couple of brooms and sweep away to some assine goal which no one understands. The women were rejected in 2006 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) added only one event, ski cross—head-to-head downhill racing that prides itself on being chaotic. Too few ski jumpers was the reason, said the IOC. The women argued numbers: 83 competitors at the elite level from 14 countries, more women than for ski cross, bobsled, snowboard cross, luge or skeleton, according to Women’s Ski Jumping USA, nonprofit volunteers supporting the athletes.
But why would the IOC bar women ski jumpers? Women’s Ski Jumping Vice President Vic Method has a theory: “This is a big macho event in Europe. If suddenly you’ve got these little size-four girls jumping comparable distances, the men don’t look so macho anymore.” When the Vancouver ski jump opened in 2008, Lindsey Van of the U.S. out-jumped the men, setting the record of 105.5 meters on the new 95-meter jump and promising Olympic drama now denied, or at least delayed.
Men have been ski jumping since the early 1800s and were part of the first winter Olympics in 1924. The event is spectacular and scary, especially on the biggest hills. A lone skier sits on a bar atop a 215-meter hill (that’s about 705 feet high). He pushes off and speeds down the 382-foot, snow-covered surface at 64 miles an hour. Then suddenly he’s airborne, flying as far as 784 feet, 40 feet high, hitting the ground with such force that, when things go wrong, we’re reminded of that old “Wide World of Sports” footage about “the agony of defeat.”
Women—ski jumping since the 1880s and in FIS-sanctioned events since 1998—take the same risks as the men. The technical difficulty of their events is the same and their performances are comparable, but they don’t get to compete on the sport’s biggest stage, the Olympics.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704533204575047482012978218.html?mod=wsj_share_facebook
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